The Sweetest Dark (17 page)

The only people I ever glimpsed mud-spattered from the weather were Hastings and Jesse, who drove the Iverson wagons on and off the island, because the food had to come from somewhere. Should the rains never cease and the fish flee and the sea rise to flood the earth, we'd have nothing but soggy herbs from the kitchen garden to sustain us. It was a tad too easy to imagine my fellow students resorting to cannibalism—they definitely appeared the type—but it seemed to me a dire prospect. I had no doubt most of my classmates would taste like vinegar.

Naturally, preparation for the duke's party consumed them. Even the girls too young to attend gossiped and sighed over the notion of dancing in Armand's arms, and bickered over which of them would make the best sweetheart. Sophia and her band of merrymakers, who
were
attending, pretended they had much better things to do than worry about one single, provincial little party, even if it was being hosted by a duke. But it was all they talked about, anyway, outside class.

Outside class, I sat alone and dreamed of anything but the party.

Outside class, I sat and dreamed of the coming night.

At night, every night, I was no longer alone. Whatever time we could spare, whether it was hours or just minutes, Jesse and I met in the grotto, and we practiced my Becoming.

That was how I had begun to think of it privately. Becoming, capitalized. I still wasn't certain
what
I was Becoming. I tried to hold on to the image of a butterfly emerging from a cocoon. That seemed safe enough.

I'd never seen any picture of a dragon, however, that looked anything like a butterfly. Less wings; rather more teeth.

The small, sleepy hours of early Saturday morning found us seated, as we usually were, on the upper slope of the grotto's embankment. We had blankets and food and water—no wine—and the soft, antiqued light of Jesse's lantern bathing us in amber. I endeavored with my entire heart not to think of these stolen moments as anything romantic. Jesse was not courting me. He was not wooing me, certainly not as I'd heard boys usually did, sending girls posies or poems or buying them sweets or taking them to the theatre. He didn't attempt to kiss me even once.

We met like this because he was teaching me to Become. And yet every night I sat there opposite him on the blankets and looked at his attentive, handsome face and I thought,
This is our wooing. This is our Becoming.

I'd had no luck with going to smoke again. During school I tried so hard to stay … as myself. But later on, down beneath the castle, when I
did
try to dissolve, it simply didn't happen.

There were times when I felt ready to burst. My skin felt shrunken, my heart hammered in my chest. I was
so
close. I willed myself back to that moment at the brink of the roof; I willed the fiend back inside me; I willed the voice to come to life …

 … and, nothing.

The tide came in. The tide went out. Nights alone with Jesse in this haunted, sparkling cave, and all I had to show for it were dark smudges under my eyes and a constant chill I couldn't seem to shake, even during daylight.

I didn't ever speak the words aloud, but it wasn't going to happen, I knew. And I couldn't blame it on the weather, or the stars, or my uncertain age. Deep down, what prevented the Becoming was purely me.

Because, deep down, I was afraid.

It was selfish and cowardly and low, I admit it. Certainly there were people beyond my cloistered world who were suffering far worse terrors than my own. The Tommies forced to live and die in mud trenches, for example, or the townsfolk trapped beneath the deadly zeppelins—I had
smelled
them burning; the most craven part of my soul thanked the heavens I could not hear the screams. But Jesse had said
pain.

The pain of the war seemed far from me, but the promise of my own was as near as a sword dangling over my head.

And I was afraid. Sincerely.

“Let's try something new,” he said now. We spoke in undertones, even though there was no real chance anyone above us would overhear. No matter how careful we were, however, the grotto took our words and sighed them back at us.

… 
new-new-new
 …

“Like what?” I asked.

“Anything else. Obviously, concentrating as you've been isn't helpful. So let's not think about the specifics of what we hope for. Smoke or anything like that.”

I sat back on my hands. “Fine with me.”

He had walked from the woods tonight, I could tell. The fresh, dark scent of the night still clung to him, and his boots were damp, with bits of grass and leaves flecking the leather.

Jesse reached down and peeled free a small, perfectly oval spring leaf from near his ankle, holding it up by its stem.

“I'll tell you a story instead,” he said, gazing at the leaf.

“Tell me about the ghost. Who was she?”

“Ah, the ghost. Her name was Rose.”

“Was she one of the builders?”

He twirled the leaf between his fingers, back and forth. “No.”

“One of the students?” I shivered. “That's it, isn't it? She was a student.”

“It's not my story to tell you. I'm sorry. It belongs to someone else.”

“Don't you know?”

“I do know. But I have in mind a different tale entirely.”

Without warning, his hand glowed bright. The little leaf was engulfed in a globe of brilliance; the cavern flamed to life, all the sparkles on the walls transformed into countless flashing suns. I lifted an arm to cover my eyes–then the light was gone.

When I looked at him again, Jesse was looking back at me, his jaw set and face masked with shadows. The leaf was exactly as before but now, of course, solid gold. He offered it to me, unsmiling.

“Once upon an age—”

“Can you do that with anything?” I cut in.

“No.” Since I hadn't taken the leaf, he placed it on the blanket between us. “Only living things. Nothing inanimate.”

“That's why it's flowers,” I said, realizing. “You transform flowers and plants, like the brooch and my cuff. But could you do it to—”

“Yes. But I won't. Life is precious, Lora. All life is precious, even roses. Even frogs, or snails, or the lowest of crawling things. I have no desire to be the arbiter of life or death over others, despite this gift of alchemy. Perhaps because of it. Transmuting the living into gold destroys it, even as it preserves its physical shape.”

My mind raced. “What about a tree? Could you transmute a tree?”

“Yes.”

I sat up straighter. “You could be
rich.
You could be richer than the king, if you liked. My God, Jesse. You could have a whole forest of gold! You could have
anything.
”

… 
anything-anything-anything
 …

“
Rich
is a matter of perspective. I think my life is rich enough. And I have already”—he gave me a significant look—”nearly all that I want.”

“But you could
also
have a mansion. And servants of your own. A cook! And motorcars and chauffeurs and a telephone and—”

“I'm a country lad, Lora. I'm happy like this.”

I shook my head, exasperated.
I
was a city girl and had lived poor for as long as I could remember. Lived poor and hated it. It never would have occurred to me—or to anyone else from St. Giles, I'd wager—that someone with the means to escape the grind of poverty would simply choose not to do so.

A forest of gold. In my mind's eye, it was glimmering and endless, a shimmery warm paradise. Like a scrap of proof of what could be, the oval leaf gleamed next to my thigh, shiny as a newly minted coin.

I picked it up. Nothing warm there: It had taken on the chill of the grotto already, cold against my fingers. Even its tiny treble song felt cold.

And then all the exasperation in me began to fade. I looked down at the leaf. I felt its firm chill and recalled its green spring softness from moments before. Its life.

A thought scratched at me, elusive. Jesse had shown me something and it had slipped by me; I had missed a message tucked between words and actions. I had missed a lesson. What was it?

I said, very slow, “Alchemy is surely a great gift, one of the greatest. What sacrifice do you make for it?”

For a long minute, he was quiet. Finally he said, “I'll strike you a deal, dragon-girl. You listen to my story now, and I'll tell you of the sacrifice later.”

“Later? When?”

“When you truly need to know.”

“I think I bloody need to know right now.”

“I'll tell you later, I promise. But now—we've only an hour or so before the maids are up. So, please.” He leaned forward, pressed his lips swift and cool against mine, and, even though I didn't mean to, I stiffened, surprised. “Just listen. And relax.”

I nodded and Jesse drew away, almost smiling. I lay back on the blanket and closed my eyes, clutching the leaf. Between the sting of pleasure that lingered on my mouth and the tinkling leaf song in my hand, I felt anything but relaxed.

Once more, his low, measured voice filled the cavern.

“Once upon an age, there were no humans on the earth, only Elementals, beings of pure form and intent, very powerful. We would call them spirits today, I suppose, or gods, except there were no people around to worship them. Yet the humans did come eventually, and the Elementals discovered they could not compete against pragmatic mankind. One by one they ceased to exist, until finally there was but one left. A goddess.”

“What did she look like?” I wondered aloud, not opening my eyes.

“She was too compelling to look at directly. Bright like the sun, bright and terrible. Only one other being could look upon her, and that was Death. And so … they became lovers.”

He said the word like a caress, like velvet again, and my face began to heat.

“Together they forged great and hellish things,” Jesse murmured. “Lightning and waterfalls that churned into clouds off the tip of the world. Chasms so winding deep that daylight never traced their endings. They dreamed through golden days and silvered nights. All the other creatures envied or adored them, because Death and the Elemental were destruction and creation joined as One. In the natural order of things, they should not have been stronger joined. And yet they were.”

He shifted, coming closer to me. A hand settled lightly atop my chest, directly over my heart. At our feet the seawater splashed a little, as if disturbed by something rolling over in the dark, distant deep.

“Centuries passed, and mankind began to devour the earth, even the wildest places. They had tools to invent and wars to fight and grubby, short lives. Nothing about them dwelled in the magic of the ancient spirits. So although Death, the Great Hunter, prospered as he sieved through their villages, the Elemental, strong as she once was, thinned into a web of gossamer. Human lives simply tore her apart.”

His hand was so warm. Warmer than I, warmer than the air, and still just barely touching me. The light behind my lids never lifted, so I knew he wasn't glowing, but it felt as if he held a tame coal to my skin. It felt like something painless and ablaze, drawing my heart upward into it.

“The time had come for them to divide. Like all the rest of her kind, the goddess would cease to exist; she had no other course. So Death and the Elemental severed their joined hearts. For a few generations more, she drifted alone through the last of the sacred places, deserts and fjords, lands so savage no human had yet desecrated them.”

Jesse's voice dropped to a whisper. Without moving his hand, he bent down, his breath in my ear. “And Death, who had tasted her brightness, who would never cease to crave it—who knew her better than all the collected souls of all mankind's weeping dead—became her Hunter.”

I was hot and strange. I was light and lighter, and curiously my breath came so slow.

“Until at last, one starry night beneath the desert moon, she surrendered to him. She allowed him to come to her, to make love to her. To unravel her …”

...

It was happening. He sat next to her and bore witness to her change, her pulse slowing, her skin blanching, the fans of her lashes stark against the contours of her face. He kept his palm there against her chest, up and down with her respiration, and watched the smoke begin to curl around his fingers.

“And by his hand, in the bliss of her unraveling, she touched the stars… .”

Lora's breath hitched. Her heart skipped—then stopped.

If I could take this from you,
Jesse thought fiercely.
If I could take this one moment away from you and keep the agony for myself—

Her eyes opened, went instantly to his. Panic lit her gaze.

Then she was gone.

His fingers sank to the floor through her empty blouse, and the blue dragon smoke that was all of Eleanore Jones rose into strands above him.

Chapter Nineteen

It did not hurt.

It took me a while to comprehend that. I think mostly what I felt in those first few seconds, beyond astonishment, was an extreme sense of loss: loss of gravity, loss of orientation, loss of Jesse's touch. Yet, by some means, I could still see. I could hear. I was still myself, with my own thoughts but none of my own body.

I was lighter than the air. I was diaphanous, bobbing and floating and unable to control it, and the dripping-wet stalactites poked down around me, and Jesse was a boy on his feet below me, his face tipped up, gilded hair and eyes glinting like emeralds.

He mouthed my name. It came to me distant and smothered, but, weirdly, it didn't seem to matter. The boy down there didn't matter nearly as much as these fascinating rock formations that combed through me now with their solid teeth, because I knew that they were only the lid on a ceiling, and beyond the ceiling was freedom.

And, oh, how I yearned for it. I twined and spiraled and searched for a way out, and the waiting stars sang hallelujahs to me and pulled and pulled—
yes, this way
—

“Lora. Lora!”

I bubbled against the ceiling. The smoky fragments of me stretched longer and longer; I realized I could become less than smoke. I could flatten myself, sheer as a sheet of molecules, a shimmering whisper of next-to-nothing. Even thinner.

And it felt … 
good.

That was when I knew that, if I wanted, I could just keep thinning. Let myself unravel. Final freedom. No weight, no pain, no worries. Not ever again.

“Come back to me, Eleanore. Listen to me. You have to come back now.”

The boy spoke sternly, and I paused. A fire burned within him. How peculiar that I could see it now, in this form, when he could do me no harm. It burned inside him without even a flicker, just this strong, steady light that illuminated him in flame and gold, every cell. Every beautiful bit.

“Dragon,” snapped the boy. “I command you to come back.”

I wanted to laugh at that. Command. Indeed.

But … he'd done something to me. I couldn't maintain my lovely thin stretch. I was changing, thickening, even as I fought it. I was pouring back down to the floor of the cavern in a darker mass, coils of smoke that tightened into the shape of the girl I'd once been, a girl with feet and tucked legs and a body hunched over them, her head hanging and her long hair sweeping the stone.

My fingers curled against damp rock. I sucked in air.

Then Jesse was crouched beside me, an arm tight around my back, his head bent over mine. He might have been breathing harder than I was.

“You—” I gulped some more air. “You can
command
me?”

“I didn't want to have to.”

“That is completely unfair!”

“Aye.”

He pulled me to my feet and embraced me fully, something he'd never done before. I allowed myself to sink into the heat of his body for a minute, then lifted my head from his chest, blinking. The cavern seemed more sparkly. Everything looked sparklier and brighter. Colder. On the ground a few feet away lay a familiar pile of clothing in a very familiar layout, and I was wearing none of it.

Perhaps he noticed, too. Perhaps he just read the subtle signals of my body, the sudden rigidity of my spine, because he stepped back and began to shrug out of his peacoat.

“Here.” He draped it over me. “How are you? How do you feel?”

“Naked,” I grumbled. “You can
command
me?”

His hands tightened upon my shoulders. “Eleanore.” When my eyes lifted to his, Jesse broke into a grin. And right then I glimpsed again the ineffably divine fire that burned within this child of the stars; it was there, right there behind the summer beauty of his gaze. All the brightness around me, all the sparkles, the heat and cold and the rising joy that welled through me so sharply it almost hurt: all reflections of him.

“You did it,” he said. “You went to smoke.”

I touched a hand to his cheek, awed. “Crikey. I did.”

...

Smoke, of course, is not quite a dragon. I reminded myself of that as I lay in my bed that morning, waiting for Gladys's knock. The sun was rising and the sky flushed a vigorous pink, but I knew there'd be no sleep for me for some while.

I had
lost
my human body, even if it had been for only a few short minutes. I had Become something less than corporeal. I had defied all logic and all proper sanity,
and
I'd had a witness.

I wasn't mad. But I wasn't quite a dragon yet, either. I felt itchy and odd. Like the twilight, I was now a thing between worlds, and I felt … incomplete.

Before we'd left the grotto, Jesse said that maybe the pain of my transformation wasn't supposed to be with smoke. That maybe it was going to be when I shifted into a more monstrous shape.

He hadn't actually said
monstrous.
I thought it fairly implied.

I squirmed against my sheets, imagining wing bones digging into my back. I held up my hands and spread my fingers before my face. I squinted at them, turning them this way and that in the rosy light, then bent my fingers into claws.

For a second—no more than that—I could have sworn there was an impression of scales along my wrists, ridged and perfect. Then I looked closer, and all I saw were wrists.

A shadow zipped by the window, too swift to follow. Then another, and another. I got up, stuck my head beyond the sill.

The flock of gannets shot like bullets past my tower, flying hard and fast away from me toward the sea, into the rising pink sun.

I heard the hiss of the air sluiced from their wings. I smelled the fish-feather muck of their scent.

The itching inside me crept nearer to the surface of my skin.

...

To the tenth- and eleventh-year girls' open dismay, the duke's party was considered a scholastic function. Therefore, we would all wear our formal Iverson uniforms, which looked nearly exactly like our everyday uniforms but for a frothing of lace along the shirtwaists and skirts of satin damask instead of broadcloth.

I wanted to inquire what scholastic function, precisely, attending a birthday party fulfilled but knew better than that. Mrs. Westcliffe had made it clear that I was expected to attend, so whatever punishment she might devise, it wouldn't include getting to stay behind.

I shall not ask intelligent questions.

x 1,000.

We all waited in the parlor for the duke's automobiles—how many did he have, anyway?—to show up and ferry us in excellent style to the celebration. Mrs. Westcliffe and Miss Swanston were to be our dutiful shepherds, and they waited with us, standing in the middle of the room with crossed arms and jewelry spangling their persons. Even Miss Swanston, it seemed, had the means for a pearl choker. A gaggle of younger girls clustered about the doorway, shoving at one another for the best spot from which to eye us with envy.

I sat in my horsehair chair, gazing at my knees, thinking about smoke and sacrifices and how Mrs. Westcliffe's garnet earbobs thrummed to a beat that resembled a Sousa march, which seemed exquisitely appropriate.

I'd never before worn anything made of satin. I was fairly certain I'd never even touched it.

The skirt was aubergine and textured with poppies. The poppies felt nubby against my palms; the rest of the material was smooth smooth smooth. Beneath my outward elegance, my plain cotton chemise and corset chafed at my skin, and it seemed like something of a cheat.

I'd heard of nobs with satin sheets on their beds. I'd heard of street girls who saved up for months for satin petticoats. And now one entire half of me was wrapped in this thick, slippery cloth, and all I could think was,
How could anyone sleep in this?

“Good gad, it's absolutely
sweltering
in here,” groused Malinda, but softly, because we weren't allowed to say
gad.
I'd noticed that when she was particularly peevish, her voice took on a singsong edge. “Must we have
all
the lamps burning?”

“The better to see ourselves by, my dear,” murmured Sophia, scrutinizing her face in one of the mirrors. Her earbobs were of diamonds. She looked stunning, and she knew it.

Lillian was fanning herself with one hand. “I feel as if I might melt. How is my hair? Is it positively limp? It is, isn't it? It is. I can tell.”

Caroline shouldered up next to Sophia in the mirror, pouting. “At least your complexion holds up. I'm red as a beet.”

“I'm going to look positively wilted for the party. I am.”

“I
do
wish they'd bother to
get
here already. Do you think the duke
knows
how
tardy
his servants are? They
are
in his employ. Should someone
inform
him?”

“They're here,” I said, and stood.

“Oh,
really,
” snarled Malinda. “Now you have the hearing of a
dog,
is that it, Eleanore?”

“How fitting,” chimed in Chloe from nearby, I suppose because she couldn't resist.

The duke, as it happened, had at least five automobiles, because that was how many showed up to carry us off the isle. I rode to Tranquility with Mrs. Westcliffe again, Miss Swanston on my other side, and took comfort in the thought of all the other girls crammed into the other autos, sincerely hoping that the wind blew them to rags.

In defiance of the war and the airships and any sort of two-candles-a-month rule, Tranquility was lit to blazes when we pulled up. It appeared that every window in every room shone with light, and it turned out that the party wasn't even to be held indoors.

We followed the butler through a ballroom to the formal gardens in back, and even the headmistress couldn't contain her gasp of wonder.

Beneath the rising moon, the grounds opened up in a spread of rolling grasses and marble stairways and gazebos and trees, finely garbed people swirling through it all like flower petals loosed to the wind. Torches burned along the farther paths, bright dots of orange against the blackening sky; Chinese lanterns glowing red and green and turquoise swayed more placidly from the trees. A string orchestra played a waltz from a corner of the courtyard just below us. No one danced to it; the rest of the courtyard was taken up by elaborately dressed tables of food and champagne.

This was a far more momentous event than a tea party, clearly.

“Well,” said Mrs. Westcliffe at last, remembering to close her mouth.

“Quite so,” agreed Miss Swanston, with a sideways, smiling look at me. “Miss Jones. Would you care to lead the way?”

I descended the steps from the ballroom to the courtyard with satin clenched in both hands, making my way to the duke's receiving line, stationed right by the first champagne table. Armand stood beside him, both of them in black tails and pomade so sleekly perfect they looked cut from a fashion journal.

Without making eye contact, I curtsied, mumbled my greeting, then moved quickly aside to allow Mrs. Westcliffe room to fawn.

“Your Grace.”

“Irene. Welcome. Miss Swanston. And, er—you, as well, Miss Eleanore. I trust the journey here wasn't too taxing?”

“Not in the least. You are, as always, the most gracious host… .”

Because I'd moved, Armand was now directly in front of me. Our eyes locked. He did not speak. I did not speak.

“… you have certainly outdone yourself this year! What a truly handsome transformation to the gardens, truly inspired …”

I sighed, giving in first. “Happy birthday. I don't have a gift.”

His brows drew together. “Excuse me?”

“I said, I didn't bring a gift. Sorry.”

He stared down at me. “Why would you—wait. Did you think … all this was for me?”

“Isn't it?”

And he started to laugh. Really laugh, genuinely laugh; it snared his father's attention and that of Mrs. Westcliffe. Miss Swanston, angling behind me, placed a gloved hand on my elbow.

“How heartwarming to see young people getting along so well! Miss Jones, we mustn't keep His Grace and Lord Armand. There are far too many guests eager to speak with them.”

“Have a grand time,” Armand managed, still chortling, as we moved off.

Mrs. Westcliffe found a lost flock of her little lambs milling about; apparently the other motorcars from Iverson had arrived. With a word to Miss Swanston, she left to tend to them.

Miss Swanston remained with me. By unspoken accord, we headed to the nearest table of food.

A maid bobbed at us and handed us plates. As the waltz shifted into a polonaise, we only stood there, taking it all in. Oysters on platters of chipped ice, haunches of beef waiting to be carved, fat lobster tails, strawberries, glazed duck, roasted artichokes, sturgeon in lemon sauce, salads, brandied fruits. Breads and breads and breads, a thousand kinds of cheeses and grapes—it was without question the most food I'd ever seen assembled in one place.

As if the war did not exist. As if rationing did not exist; as if hungry children stuck in foundling homes did not exist.

I might have remained as I was for hours, stunned and starving, but Miss Swanston took the tongs for the strawberries, which were nearest, and placed a few on my plate.

“How are things, Eleanore?”

I woke up fast. In my experience, when adults asked this question, it never led anywhere pleasant.

“Very fine, ma'am.”

“Good. I'm pleased to hear it.” She moved on to the roast beef, nodding to the footman behind the table for a slice. “I imagine it's been something of a transition for you. Coming all the way out here from the city, I mean.”

“Yes,” I agreed, straight-faced.

“But, I must say, I think you've adapted nicely. You seem a resilient girl.”

“Thank you, ma'am.”