Roses and Rot (11 page)

At night, I would close my eyes and clench my fists, and wish that my mother would die. I couldn’t see how I would survive growing up if she didn’t.

She didn’t die, and I did survive my childhood, but I think back on that wish, on those moments when I was curled in my bed, my faced buried in my pillow so Marin couldn’t hear me crying, and remember how hard I wished. So hard I shook with the strength of it.

Even though I knew it was wrong, even though I knew it was terrible, that if I was in a story I was the monster for thinking such a thing, I never wished for anything else so hard in my life.

The wind blew strong enough to rattle the shutters on their hinges, and it howled like a chorus of lost souls. Rain spattered like stones against the windows. Trees snapped and cracked as the storm stole their branches.

“Are you working, or can I come in?” Marin stood in the doorway, sleep-tousled and wrapped in a robe I hadn’t seen before.

I cocked my head, taking it in. “Does your robe seriously have—”

“Hippopotamuses wearing tutus? I just got it—isn’t it great?” She twirled so I could appreciate its full glory.

“It is great. And I was working, but I can use the break, so make yourself at home.”

She walked to the window, arms wrapped around herself.

“Trouble sleeping?” I asked.

“I was fine until the storm woke me up.” A branch slammed into the window, shaking the glass in its frame. Marin flinched. “You don’t happen to have any Star Princess stories lying around in your brain, do you?”

I took a breath. We had built enough of a bridge, I thought, that I could tell her now. Tell her I had written them out, made them for a Christmas that we’d never celebrated, that they were put away now. Maybe I could even ask her why it was she’d gone silent when I went away to school, what it was that I had done to make her not want to talk to me for years. Maybe we could finally say all those unsaid words.

“Though on second thought, you know what? I’d love to hear something new, something you’ve been working on here, if you don’t mind sharing.”

The moment slid through my fingers.

“Sure. Okay. Let me find something that’s in non-embarrassing shape. One of the ones I sent to Beth.”

While I sorted through papers, she dropped onto the bed, the side farthest from the windows, and tucked her robe around her, carefully covering her feet. “Okay, go.”

“ ‘Once upon a time,’ ” I began.

Once upon a time, there were two sisters, and there was a forest. The forest was, in the way of these things, full of secrets.

Not just the secrets of leaves and trees, of fur and feathers, of the shadowed spaces. Certainly it had all of those, but it had other secrets as well.

A tower, and at its height a woman singing a song that called the ocean in and out upon the sand.

A ruin of a castle, with ghost knights in spectral armour as guards for its crumbling hallways.

A maze of flowers that shifted depending on the day, with a pool that led to forever at its center.

And so the forest was a place of wonder for them, and they learned to love secrets and strangeness.

“Wait,” Marin said. “Stop there.”

“Why?”

“Because if you stop there, everything’s fine. They’re together, they’re happy. They have a magic forest. If you keep reading, something bad will happen.”

She wasn’t wrong. “Even if I promise there’s a happy ending?”

“Even then. I just want to skip the sad bits right now,” she said.

“Okay. They lived long and happy lives together in their forest.”

“Happily ever after.” Marin smiled.

“Exactly,” I said. “The end.”

She yawned hugely. “Okay. I’m going back downstairs to hope that I can sleep through the storm this time. Good night.”

“Good night,” I said.

“Oh, and Imogen. I really liked what you read. Thanks.”

And for a moment, I could have happily stopped time, my sister’s words my own small happy ending.

“So, have you heard from Evan recently?” Ariel asked.

“Yesterday,” I said. “He sent me a letter.” With directions in it, precise ones, and a map. It gave me hope that this time I wouldn’t get lost looking for his studio.

“Another on-paper letter? Not an email or a text?”

“I know. It would be so much easier. Sometimes I feel like I’m flirting with someone from a hundred years ago. But it is kind of sweet—he sketches on the envelopes for me.” I opened the drawer in my desk and handed Evan’s most recent letter to her.

“Okay, that moves it from ridiculous to romantic. Go on.”

“He asked if I wanted to come and see his art.”

“Oh, please tell me he said ‘Come up and see my etchings.’ ” She passed the envelope back to me. “Because you know he wants to make out.”

“The making out was implied.”

“I’ll bet. Have fun.”

It would have been easier to walk to Evan’s studio if the making out had been the primary purpose. I liked kissing Evan and wanted
to do it again. Simple enough. It was the art that I was concerned about. There was the possibility that I would hate it, or worse yet, that it would leave me cold. It’s one thing to talk about separating the artist from the art in the abstract, another when they’re both standing in front of you. “That’s . . . really interesting” only gets you so far, and usually in a direction that means that kissing won’t happen.

Nerves singing under my skin, I stood in front of the door to Evan’s studio and watched birds roost, black-feathered, in the trees. The leaves were more gold than green now, and the air smelled of stone and mineral, the first whispers of the winter to come.

I knocked.

“Imogen! Come in.” Evan looked rumpled, soot or grease smudging his hands. He hugged me hello, and I breathed in the scent of burnt metal that clung to him. “Would you like the tour, or would you like to look around on your own?”

“To look on my own first, thanks.” That way I wouldn’t have to worry about keeping my face blank if I didn’t like what I saw.

“Please.” He stepped aside.

It was a forest, but a metal one. Trees of woven metal reaching through the air, up, as if the earth burned them and they would root themselves in the sky instead. There was something near-human about them, the branches outstretched like hands, the trunks elegant as dancers’ bodies.

The metal was shaded, colored. Not the unrelieved black of iron, but other, richer shades—silvers and coppers, bronze and brass. Some rusted, some tarnished, some polished clean. I walked through them slowly, barely even breathing, turning in circles so I could see the detail. My fingers ached to reach out and touch them.

“I’m sorry,” Evan said. “I was just going to leave you alone. I wasn’t going to ask, but I have to know. What do you think?”

They made my heart hurt. “They’re wonderful. Lonely and welcoming at the same time. Like a real forest.”

I could see the tension slide off him. “I was more nervous than I expected to be,” he said. “I got up early to work, and then I was so preoccupied, I couldn’t do anything right all day.

“I haven’t shown my work to anyone since—” He stopped. Looked away. “Sorry. Anyway, you’re the first person to see these.”

“So this isn’t the commission for Gavin, then?”

His face was a careful blank.

“The one you mentioned when you guys”—acted so weird—“ran into each other at the Market?”

“No, this is something else. Though related, I suppose.” He turned away, made a note on his drafting table.

I stepped forward and kissed him. “They’re wonderful,” I said again. “Would you mind if I stayed a bit longer, just to look?”

“Not if you don’t mind that I’ll be working.”

“You don’t need to entertain me.” I wanted to be alone with the sculptures, to imagine the rest of this forest, the stories it held.

“Then stay as long as you like.”

They were like lightning caught in metal, that same crackle and movement. Sitting among the trees, it was if I could feel people trapped in their shapes, longing, reaching out, transforming. There was nothing anthropomorphic about them, but still, I could feel the forest’s broken heartbeat.

Late in the day, and the sun setting through the windows like stained glass, the colors of the sky broken by the metal branches. Magic. I wished I could see what the trees looked like out of doors, wished I could stay longer.

I went to find Evan, who was sketching at a desk in the back of the studio. “If I had known I could see your forest through the
windows, maybe I wouldn’t have gotten so lost when I was looking for this place.”

“You got lost on your way here?” he asked, stroking his hand down the back of my hair. “I weep for my map skills. However can I make it up to you?”

I laughed, stepped closer. “No, the map was great. But last week I was walking by and wanted to visit.”

His hands stilled. “And you got lost.”

I had seen him that day. I was almost sure. Almost. Though, no. It couldn’t have been him. If he had been there, he would have seen me, would have said something, wouldn’t have walked away, leaving me more lost than when I began.

“Ridiculous, right?” I shook my head. “Underslept, or overcaffeinated, or my head lost in my writing. Something. At least I found my way here today.” I wound my hands around his neck.

“And next time”—he brushed his lips against mine, once, twice, then kissed me again, deeper—“stay longer.”

“I will,” I said, and let myself out into the falling night.

The walk home was beautiful. The air crisp but not cold, the moon bright and heavy in the sky, and I was floating in a haze, near drunk on art and flirtation. So instead of working when I got back, I changed into running clothes.

Once I had laced up my shoes and clipped my lamp to my shirt, I texted Marin to let her know I was going for a run, and approximately when I thought I’d be back. My phone buzzed:
Have fun! Full moon! Watch out for werewolves.
The last was punctuated with a howling wolf emoji.

I headed off the path and into the forest, wanting the rustle and hush of living things. The moon was bright enough that I didn’t
turn on my lamp. It rimed the leaves with silver. Grass crunched beneath my feet.

I had run about three miles and was thinking of turning back for home when I heard the hoofbeats. Hoofbeats, and the crash and pressure of something heavy moving through the forest.