Divine rivals, p.8
Divine Rivals, page 8
She wondered if she had dreamt that moment with him, when they had almost spoken to one another like old friends. When he had laughed, listened, and apologized. Because it suddenly felt like some feverish imagining.
The fuss was dying down at last. Roman dropped his messenger bag, but then he must have felt her stare. His gaze lifted and found her on the other side of the room, over the sea of desks and paper and conversations.
For a breath, Iris couldn’t move. And whatever mask he had been wearing for everyone else—the smile and the merry eyes and the flushed cheeks—faded until she saw how exhausted and sad he was.
It struck a chord within her, music that she could feel deep in her bones, and she broke their stare first.
* * *
Iris was halfway through drafting an essay inspired by the myth she had received in the wardrobe when Sarah approached her desk with a scrap of paper.
“The constable just called this in,” she said, setting it on Iris’s desk. “Was hoping we could squeeze it into tomorrow’s paper.”
“What is it?” Iris asked, preoccupied with her writing.
“I’m not sure what to call it. But they found a body this morning, and they’re hoping someone will be able to identify her. The description is there, written down. It’s just dreadful, isn’t it? Being killed like that.”
Iris paused, hands in mid-type, to glance at the paper.
“Yes,” she said in a hollow tone. “I’ll take care of it. Thank you, Prindle.”
She waited until Sarah strode away. Then she read it, and the words swam in her eyes, burned through her mind, until she felt as if she were trying to squeeze herself through a tight space. A long, narrow tunnel.
A woman was hit and killed by a tram last night around 10:45 PM. There was no identification on her, but she looks to be in her mid-forties, with light brown hair and fair skin. She was wearing a purple coat and was barefoot. If you think you may know her or be able to identify her, please see Constable Stratford at Station Nine.
Iris rose with the note, her knees shaking. The weight in her chest was overwhelming. She remembered to grab her tapestry bag, but she forgot her trench coat, draped over her chair. She left her desk lamp on and essay page curled in the typewriter and she simply quit the office without a word, hurrying out the glass doors.
She pushed the button for the lift, and then felt her gorge rising.
The elevator was taking too long. She rushed to the stairs, and she half ran, half tripped down them, trembling so violently that she barely made it out the lobby doors before she vomited into a potted plant on the marble steps.
Straightening, Iris wiped her mouth and began to walk to Station Nine, which wasn’t far from her home.
It’s not her, she told herself over and over, with each step that drew her closer. It’s not her.
But Iris hadn’t seen her mother in over twenty-four hours. She hadn’t been sprawled on the sofa that morning, like she had been the dawn before. Iris had assumed she was in her bedroom with the door closed. She should have checked, to make sure. Because now this doubt was piercing her.
When Iris reached the station, she paused, as if not entering would keep the truth from happening. She must have stood on the front stairs for a while, because the shadows were long at her feet and she was shivering when an officer approached her.
“Miss? Miss, you can’t stand on the stairs like this. You need to move.”
“I’m here to identify a body,” she rasped.
“Very well. Follow me, please.”
The station corridors were a blur of cream-colored walls and crooked hardwood floors. The air was astringent and the light harsh when they made it to an examination room.
Iris came to an abrupt halt.
The coroner was standing with a clipboard, dressed in white clothes and a leather apron. Beside him was a metal table, and on the table was a body.
Aster looked like she was sleeping, save for the crooked way she rested beneath a sheet and the gash on her face. Iris stepped forward, as if taking her mother’s hand would make her stir. She would feel her daughter’s touch, and it would pull her back from whatever chasm that wanted her, from whatever nightmare they were trapped within.
“Miss?” the coroner was saying, and his nasal voice reverberated through her. “Can you identify this woman? Miss, can you hear me?”
Iris’s hand froze in the air. Stars began to dance at the edges of her sight as she stared at her mother. Dead and pale and in a place so far away, Iris would never be able to reach her.
“Yes,” she whispered before she collapsed, into the embrace of darkness.
{11}
The Vast Divide
It was dark and cold and long past midnight when Iris walked home from the station, carrying a box of her mother’s belongings. A mist spun in the air, turning lamplight into pools of gold. But Iris could hardly feel the chill. She could hardly feel the cobblestones beneath her feet.
Her hair and clothes were beaded with moisture by the time she stepped into her flat. Of course, it was full of quiet shadows. She should be used to it by now. And yet she still peered into the darkness for a glimpse of her mother—the spark of her cigarette and the slant of her smile. Iris strained against the roar of silence for any sound of life—a clink of a bottle or the hum of a favorite song.
There was nothing. Nothing but Iris’s labored breaths and a box of belongings and the undertaker’s bill to pay, to turn her mother’s body into ashes.
She set down the box and wandered into Aster’s room.
Iris sprawled on the rumpled bed. She could almost fool herself, remembering the time before the alcohol had set its claws into her mother. Before Forest left them. She could almost sink into the bliss of the past, when Aster had been full of laughter and stories, waitressing at the diner down the street. Brushing Iris’s long hair every night and asking her about school. What books she had been reading. What reports she was writing.
You’ll be a famous writer someday, Iris, her mother had said, deft fingers braiding Iris’s long brown hair. Mark my words. You’ll make me so proud, sweetheart.
Iris let herself weep. She cried the memories into her mother’s pillow until she was so exhausted the darkness pulled her under again.
* * *
She woke to the sound of persistent knocking on the front door.
Iris jolted upright in bed, her legs tangled in wine-stained sheets. Sunlight was streaming in through the window, and for a moment she was confused. What time was it? She had never slept this late …
She scrambled for the watch on her mother’s bedside table, which read half past eleven in the morning.
Oh my gods, she thought, and rose from the bed on shaky legs. Why had she overslept? Why was she in her mother’s bed?
It all came back to her in a rush. The message at the Gazette, Station Nine, her mother’s cold, pale body beneath a sheet.
Iris staggered, tearing her fingers through her snarled hair.
The knocking came again, insistent. And then his voice—which was the last voice she wanted to hear—called through the wood: “Winnow? Winnow, are you there?”
Roman Kitt was at her flat, knocking on her door.
Her heart quickened as she strode into the living room, directly to the door so she could peer through the peephole. Yes, there he was, standing with her trench coat draped over his arm, his face marked with concern.
“Winnow? If you’re there, please open the door.”
She continued to stare at him, noticing when his concern turned into fear. She saw his hand stray to the doorknob. When the knob turned and the door began to open, she realized with a pang that she had forgotten to lock it last night.
Iris had only three seconds to scramble backward as the door swung open. She stood in a flood of sunshine, pulse hammering in her throat as Roman caught sight of her.
She must have looked exceptionally dreadful, because he startled. And then his breath left him in a rush as he stepped over the threshold.
“Are you all right?”
Iris froze as his eyes raced over her. For a split second, she was so relieved to see him that she could have wept. But then she realized two horrible things. The first was that her blouse was gaping open, the buttons undone halfway to her navel. She glanced down and saw the white lace of her bra, which Roman no doubt had also noticed by now, and she gasped, holding the fabric closed with a trembling hand.
“I hope I’m not interrupting anything,” Roman said in a very strange voice. It took another two seconds for Iris to infer that he thought she had been with someone, and she blanched.
“No. I’m home alone,” she croaked, but his eyes were drifting beyond her, as if he expected another person to emerge from the bedroom.
And that was when the second terrible revelation hit her. Roman Upper Class Kitt was standing in her home. Her rival was standing in her flat, beholding the disarray of her life. He could see the melted candles on the sideboard from all the nights she couldn’t afford electricity, and the stray wine bottles that she had yet to gather and dispose of. How barren the living room was, and how the wallpaper was faded and falling apart.
Iris took a step away from him, pride burning in her bones. She couldn’t bear for Roman to see her like this. She couldn’t bear for him to see how messy things were in her life. For him to see her on her worst day.
“Winnow?” he said, taking a step closer, as if he felt the tug of her movements. “You’re all right?”
“I’m fine, Kitt,” she said, surprised by how rough-hewn her voice was, as if she hadn’t spoken in years. “What are you doing here?”
“We’re all very concerned,” he replied. “You left work early yesterday, and you didn’t show this morning. Is everything okay?”
She swallowed, torn between telling him the truth and concealing her pain. She stared at his chest, unable to meet his eyes. She realized if she told him about her mother, he would pity her even more than he already did. And that was the last thing she wanted.
“Yes, I’m sorry for leaving yesterday,” she said. “I felt ill. And I overslept.”
“Do you need me to send for a doctor?”
“No!” She cleared her throat. “No but thank you. I’m on the mend. Tell Autry I’ll be in first thing tomorrow.”
Roman nodded, but his eyes narrowed as he intently studied her, like he sensed her lie. “Can I get you anything else? Are you hungry? Should I fetch a sandwich or soup or whatever else you’d like?”
She gaped for a second, shocked by his offer. His gaze began to flicker around the room again, taking in the shambles she was so desperate to hide from him. Panic surged through her. “No! No, I don’t need anything. You can go now, Kitt.”
He frowned. The sunlight limned his body, but a shadow danced over his face.
“Of course. I’ll leave, as you want. I brought your coat, by the way.”
“Right. You, erm, you shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble.” She awkwardly accepted the coat, still holding her blouse shut. She avoided making eye contact.
“It was no trouble,” he said.
She could feel him staring at her, as if daring her to meet his gaze.
She couldn’t.
She would break if she did, and she waited for him to retrace his steps over the threshold.
“Will you lock the door behind me?” he asked.
Iris nodded, hugging the trench coat to her chest.
Roman finally shut the door.
She continued to stand in the empty flat. As if she had grown roots.
The minutes flowed, but she hardly sensed time. Everything felt distorted, like she was looking at her life through fractured glass. Dust motes spun in the air around her. A deep breath unspooled from her as she went to lock the door, and then she thought better of it, and looked through the peephole again.
He was still standing there, hands shoved into his coat pockets, his dark hair windblown. Waiting. Her annoyance flared until she bolted the door. As soon as he heard the locks slide, Roman Kitt turned and left.
{12}
A Shadow You Carry
Iris spent the rest of that day in a haze, trying to make sense of things. But it was like her life had shattered into a hundred pieces, and she wasn’t sure how to make it fit back together. She thought that perhaps the ache she felt would never diminish, and she bit her nails to the quick as she wandered through the flat like a ghost.
Eventually she settled in her room, on the floor. She reached for her grandmother’s typewriter and drew it out into the dusky light.
If she thought about it too hard, the words would become ice. And so Iris didn’t think; she let the words pass through her heart to her mind, down her arms to her fingertips, and she wrote:
Sometimes I’m afraid to love other people.
Everyone I care about eventually leaves me, whether it’s death or war or simply because they don’t want me. They go places I can’t find, places I can’t reach. And I’m not afraid to be alone, but I’m tired of being the one left behind. I’m tired of having to rearrange my life after the people within it depart, as if I’m a puzzle and I’m now missing pieces and I will never feel that pure sense of completion again.
I lost someone close to me, yesterday. It doesn’t feel real yet.
And I’m not sure who you are, where you are. If you are breathing the same hour, the same minute as me, or if you are decades before or years to come. I don’t know what is connecting us—if it’s magical thresholds or conquered god bones or something else we’ve yet to discover. Most of all, I don’t know why I’m writing to you now. But here I am, reaching out to you. A stranger and yet a friend.
All those letters of mine you received for several months … I thought I was writing to Forest. I wrote with the unfaltering, teeth-clenched hope that they would reach him despite the kilometers between us. That my brother would read my words, even if they were minced with pain and fury, and he would come home and fill the void I feel and fix the messiness of my life.
But I realize that people are just people, and they carry their own set of fears, dreams, desires, pains, and mistakes. I can’t expect someone else to make me feel complete; I must find it on my own. And I think I was always writing for myself, to sort through my loss and worry and tangled ambitions. Even now, I think about how effortless it is to lose oneself in words, and yet also find who you are.
I hope I’m making sense. I’m probably not, because I’m writing to you but I’m also writing for me. And I don’t expect you to respond, but it helps to know someone is hearing me. Someone is reading what I pour onto a page.
It helps to know that I’m not alone tonight, even as I sit in quiet darkness.
She sat frozen for what could have been a minute or an hour, and eventually she roused enough courage to pull the sheet from the typewriter and fold it. To slip it over the threshold and into the portal. Because that was the hardest part—sharing the words she wrote. Words that could splinter steel, exposing the soft places she preferred to hide.
Night fell. She lit a candle. She paced the flat. She told herself to eat something, to drink something, but she wasn’t hungry, even though she felt empty.
She thought she might be in shock, because she was numb and kept waiting for her mother to return home, to sweep in through the door.
Eventually, Iris stopped at the kitchen table. Her trench coat was draped over one of the chairs, and she gathered it into her arms, hiding her face in the worn fabric. She closed her eyes and breathed, realizing the coat smelled like spice and evergreen. It smelled like Roman Kitt, from when he had carried it all the way from the office to her home, to ensure she was all right.
She slipped it on and belted the coat tight at her waist, returning to her room.
A letter had arrived, the thickest one yet.
She lay on her bed and read by candlelight:
I rarely share this part of my life with others, but I want to tell it to you now. A piece of armor, because I trust you. A glint of falling steel, because I feel safe with you.
I had a little sister once.
My parents can hardly speak of her these days, but her name was Georgiana. I called her Del, because she liked her middle name Delaney best. I was eight when she was born, and I can still hear the rain that poured on the day she came into the world.
She grew up in a blink, as if the years were enchanted. I loved her fiercely. And while I had always been the obedient, reserved son who never needed discipline, she was full of curiosity and courage and whimsy, and my parents didn’t know how to raise such a spirited child in society.
On her seventh birthday, she wanted to go swimming in a pond not far from our house. Just beyond the gardens and through a stretch of woods, hidden from the bustle and sounds of the city. Our parents said no; they had planned a dinner gala for her birthday, which Del couldn’t care less about. So when she begged me to sneak out with her and go for a swim, with plenty of time to return before the party … I told her yes.
It was the heart of summer and sweltering hot. We stole from the house, barefooted and dew-eyed, and we ran through the gardens all the way to the pond. There was an old rope swing, fastened to an oak branch. We took turns, hurling ourselves out into the center of the pond, because that was where it was deepest, far from the rocks and sand of the shallows.
Eventually, I grew tired and waterlogged, and a storm was brewing overhead. “Let’s go back,” I told her, but Del begged me for a few minutes more. And I, weak brother that I was, couldn’t deny her. I conceded to sit on the shore and dry off as she continued to swing and swim. I closed my eyes for a moment, it seemed. Just a moment, with the last of the sunlight on my face, lulling me to rest.
It was the silence that made me open my eyes.
Somewhere in the distance was the thunder and the wind and the rush of rain, but the pond had fallen still. Del was floating facedown on the water, her long dark hair streaming around her. At first I thought she was playing, but then the panic cut through me, cold and sharp as a blade. I swam to her and turned her over. I rushed her to the shore; I screamed her name and breathed into her mouth and pumped her chest, but she was gone.
