Brave New Love (34 page)

I remember one thought: everyone else in my life had met the Cruce, had seen what I saw, and accepted it. This was the way of Alini, and it would become my way as well.

That night was the first time she came to my room, her white gown flowing around her. We’d been instructed about the procedure: to stand still and never raise a hand against her in love or
anger. To allow her to take our ills upon herself. The guard was there to ensure we complied though if I’ve ever struggled, I’ll never know. She’d take that memory away as
well.

There’s one other thing I remember clearly about Initiation. Before that day I have an unending stretch of memories of Lit and I together, growing up next door to one another, and spending
long evenings leaning from our windows across the gap between the houses, telling stories and playing games. Since that Initiation day, I’ve kept my window closed. The Cruce may have taken
away any ill feelings between us, but she could never take away the moment when Lit saw the way I stared at the Cruce for the first time—the horror and failure I felt in that moment before I
could compose myself. The Cruce has never taken away the embarrassment of my own weakness, or that someone else had seen it.

•  •  •

When I approach the Cruce’s doorway now, the guard doesn’t seem to care that I’m here. Anyone’s technically allowed to view the Cruce, to understand the
sacrifice she makes for the betterment of the rest of us, but still I assume the guard’s job is a lonely one.

And for some reason this thought sparks a question and before I can think better of it, I ask him if anyone else ever comes down here.

He shrugs. “None today.”

“Do you get to remember?” I ask, wondering if he, like the rest of us, must submit to the Cruce each night after escorting her through Alini.

“No,” he smiles broadly, “Thankfully not.”

I nod my head and glance at the creature past the door, wondering if anything’s changed about her since the last time I came down here so many years ago. Her gown is torn, her skin filthy
and mats tangle her hair so thoroughly it could never be combed free.

My note told me I could love the Cruce but how, I have no idea.

•  •  •

When Lit’s fingers tap on my window after dusk I lie on my bed and listen. There once was a time I’d fly to answer her but memories of the Cruce are too tight inside
me. I wait for her to come to me and take these feelings away. I can’t stand to own them anymore. There’s not enough room in me for this much misery and I refuse to wonder how the Cruce
has such capacity to take it all on herself.

•  •  •

My heart beats too heavy as I wait for the Cruce. I sit on the edge of my bed fully dressed, feet tapping against the floor in an approximation of rhythm. When she comes she is
nothing like she was in the tower. Now she is enveloped in white, every part of her crisp and clean.

The guard waits in the hall outside my room as she approaches, arms extended to rest on my shoulders. I shudder at her touch, remembering the smell of her from before. Knowing full well her
wretchedness.

When she presses her lips to mine I cringe and then she’s exhaling and memories flood into me, vivid and dark. All of my spite and rage accumulated over days and years—my failures
and insecurities. My ineptitude.

For this moment I loathe myself. I am worse than the Cruce because at least the Cruce serves a purpose in this village. At least she is the keeper of misery so that the rest of us can know only
brightness.

I am nothing like that. She is a vessel of worthiness and I am incapable of usefulness, in any shape of the term.

Tears blur my eyes from the pain and then her breath stops and I tremble, begging her to inhale and take it all from me. But she doesn’t. Not right away, and my body vibrates with the need
for release.

Then, in that infinite pause, a memory floats up bright and clear, damming the misery flowing through me.

It’s of her lips pressed to my ear whispering about herself. Night after night, she pauses after pouring back into me my own desolation and then she speaks to me as if I’m a
friend.

I realize, then, that I am a friend. That through the impossibility of these moments I’ve fallen in love with her.

“You,” I gasp out. Her eyes shine, her lips spread wide in a smile. Over her shoulder the guard hovers in the hallway, ignoring what happens in this room between us. He has tried to
stop us in the past, I know about this now, and she has stopped him. Stripped him of memory and desire to stand between us.

With trembling fingers I twine her hair in my hand, pull the Cruce against me, and kiss her. I let desire sweep over us both, pressing my body so tight to hers that no such thing as misery
exists.

In this moment she is nothing but beauty and light. She is no longer the Cruce but the girl I knew growing up. The girl who rounded out the trio with Lit and me.

“You let me remember,” I finally say, my lips still pressed against hers. “The note. You let me write the note and hide it for myself.”

Her cheeks blush and she nods. “You begged.”

Of course I did. “Because I can’t stand forgetting this. Forgetting you. Please, can’t you just leave me one? A small memory.”

She tucks her bottom lip between her teeth and sucks, thinking, and the gesture is so familiar it burns against my sternum. She’s tempted. “It would break the Bargain.”

“Please,” I press, almost panicked by the pending forgetfulness.

She tilts her head to the side, considering me. “You’d trade their misery for our happiness?” Her question echoes Lit’s from earlier and I want to immediately revolt
against its implications.

“I want you happy,” I tell her. “You deserve the right to be happy.”

She steps forward and wraps her arms around my neck, her mouth to my ear as she breathes. “I am happy.”

When she pulls back she giggles. “Now write your note and hide it. Quick.”

I scribble quickly, right hand cupped around my left so that she doesn’t see. When it’s hidden in the wall I face her again and wait for her kiss.

As she inhales I feel it all leaving me, the last memory to go is the despair at memory’s departure.

•  •  •

The Cruce deserves to be happy.
At first I think that’s all the note says but as I run my fingers over the incomprehensible words I feel the imprinted traces of
another message on a sheet that’s since been torn away. I’m standing in the greenhouse when I realize this, and I drag my finger through the dirt of a barren pot and rub it into the
crevices until more words appear:
Rescue her.

I snort out a laugh at the absurdity. The Cruce is a wretched monster, the vessel of misery created to keep our village prosperous. It’s because of her that crops grow without blight, that
the sun shines without burning, that music always sounds in harmony.

Behind me the door opens, letting in a puff of dry air that slides over my humidity-dampened skin. I glance up, blood pausing in its course through my body at the implication of being caught, as
if I’ve been doing something wrong.

“You reading poetry to the plants this time?” Lit asks, eyeing the paper still clutched in my hands. I barely resist the urge to crumple it in my fingers and shove it from view out
of fear it would only draw her attention more sharply.

“You should get more sleep,” I say to deflect her interest, nodding my head at her sleep-starved eyes and dull hair. The flush on her cheeks from being outside drains away slightly
and she pauses on her way down the aisle between planting tables. She crosses her arms, invisible sparks of anger skittering around her. “The Cruce seemed to spend more time than usual in
your room last night,” she trades a barb for a barb. “Perhaps you had more to atone for than usual?”

It’s my turn to scowl. “It’s not polite to spy.” I want desperately to glance at the paper again as if somehow I can convince myself that the writing doesn’t belong
to me—
Rescue her
—outlined in dirt in my own sloppy cursive. Instead I stride down the narrow aisle, pushing past Lit, but she grabs my arm and stops me.

“We used to be friends.” Her voice is almost desperate, and I think to myself that it’s too early in the morning to be filling the vessel of misery for the Cruce to empty.
“Did I say something?” Lit asks. “Do something to change that?”

I think of Initiation, the last time I ever remember seeing the Cruce. I remember my humiliation and how Lit saw it all. She’s the only person in this entire village who retains any memory
of my weaknesses. When I look at Lit I see the worst of what I can be without the Cruce’s intervention.

But I don’t tell her this. Instead I say “If you did, the Cruce hasn’t let me remember.”

She’s quiet for a moment but her grip on my arm doesn’t loosen. I don’t feel like pulling away. As if doing so would create some sort of irrevocable break between us.

I wonder, sometimes, if the Cruce can take our mental memories but not the physical ones. If I hit Lit, struggled against her, would our bodies remember? Would she wince against me when I saw
her tomorrow?

“Do you ever wonder who the Cruce is?” If anything her tone is more melancholy than before. I want to please her—it’s who I am. I search my brain as if the answer left an
imprint before being taken away one night.

My fist tightens around the note in my pocket as I answer. “Why would I care about the Cruce?”

•  •  •

I should be in bed. Though the sun hasn’t finished dropping past the horizon the weariness of the day rests fully on my shoulders and I want nothing more than to sleep,
meet the Cruce, and be done with the memory of this note. It sits like a stone in my pocket, the paper damp from my clutching it for so many hours.

In desperation I go to the Tower, as if seeing the Cruce in person could erase the meaning of the words I’d written to myself. There are some in my village who have spent their whole life
avoiding the Tower, as if, like a giant sundial, its shadow didn’t stretch to the tips of Alini during the course of the day. There are others who go back once or twice after Initiation, as
if they must somehow see her to understand and pay homage to her sacrifice.

I’m a member of the former group, never having had the desire to return to the scene of my Initiation as if I could somehow bury my shame of that moment. And even though it’s been
years since my first and only descent down the steps to the dungeon, the smells seem almost familiar, as if they somehow burned themselves so indelibly into my brain that I can never escape.

A guard sits by the door, head tilted back against the wall as if in boredom. I stammer something about just wanting to see her and he raises a shoulder. “No touching,” as if anyone
would want to reach through the narrow bars and touch the horrid creature beyond.

Before I even see her my skin tightens with revulsion. The air is cold, filled with the putrid scent of despair and neglect. Light from the hallway casts itself into her cell, illuminating
dirt-stained and wasted skin wrapped tightly around bird-thin bones.

My stomach revolts and I turn away. “Has anyone ever tried to touch her?”

His eyes narrow as if I’ve issued a threat rather than innocent inquiry.

“It would break the Bargain,” he says, but he must realize that’s not an answer.

“But has anyone tried? Has anyone ever tried to take her away?” I swallow, nervous, yet needing to know.

His body tenses, ready to leap at me as if I could ever force myself close enough to the horrid creature to press a finger against her, much less follow the orders of the note in my pocket and
rescue her.

“She volunteered for the role,” the guard tells me. “We honor her sacrifice for our happiness and prosperity. To break the Bargain would be to profane what she’s given
up.” The words roll from his tongue, so familiar to me that I finish the statement in my own head. But then he says something else. “Besides, she’s been like that for so long
she’s probably insane. Even if you did wake her, what would be left of her to enjoy it?”

I stare at the way her thick yellow nails curl over her sickly and broken toes. I find relief in his words, an easing along the muscles along my back as my fist unclenches around the note.
He’s right. Why would I ever rescue her if there’s nothing left to be saved?

•  •  •

As the Cruce fills me with my own wicked memories I want to pull away but I don’t because it’s against the rules and I’ve always been someone who does what he
is told. Instead I stand and take it all in me, let it grate along the inside of my skin as if looking for a way to slice free.

Just when I think I will be overtaken by the ugliness of myself, of who I’ve been, a pure bright thought begins to surface like a bubble that pops open in my chest and reminds me of love
and warmth and desire for the Cruce. It eclipses every other emotion.

“Let me take you away from here.” I press my words against her lips as we kiss as if I can somehow force them inside her and make her accept it as truth. “Just let me remember
and I’ll rescue you tomorrow. Please.”

I feel her smile, her mouth curving around mine and I groan.

•  •  •

When I arrive at the greenhouse in the morning Lit’s already there, standing in my familiar place, back turned to me and fists shoved into pots empty of everything but
dirt. I let the door swing closed as I call out to her cheerily, “Good morning, Lit.”

She barely moves her head and I only catch a glimpse of her cheek but what I see makes me hesitate. Red skin, puffed eyes, glistening trails of tears. I glance over my shoulder, realizing
I’ve come too far inside to turn around and leave and so I push myself forward, uneasy in my stomach.

“Lit?” I ask.

She pulls her hands from the soil and for a moment my breath catches, expecting to see slips of paper dripping from her fingers as though she’d dug for my secrets in the dirt.

But she holds nothing but air and then she turns to me and before I can say another word she presses her palms against my cheeks and pulls my face to hers and kisses me hard and deep. She tastes
like the earth, like dew-damp mornings and the first unfurled flower of spring.