Roses and Rot (14 page)

A man’s figure on the end, his expression that of surprise at his own sudden appearance.

Evan.

I called out to him.

The wind whipped past me again, blurring my vision. I blinked my eyes against it, and everything was as it had been. Melete in the fall, and only me, standing on one side of a bridge that was only half there. Nothing on the other side but the forest, dressed in autumn. The leaves still clung to their branches. Evan was nowhere. I walked carefully up, then to the bridge’s edge. Put my fingers on the stones, then crept them forward.

Air. Nothing.

I made my way carefully off the bridge. At its foot, I looked back to the other side, but it was still empty and unchanged.

The wind picked up and the sky greyed, but I risked the storm to detour through the studios on the way home. Evan’s trees were darker shadows against the windows, but there were no lights on, no answer to my knock. I wasn’t quite bold enough to try the door uninvited. Or to begin a conversation with “Hi, I maybe just hallucinated you in the woods, how’s your Tuesday?” if it turned out he was inside.

Rain pelted down, near-sleet and spiteful. I closed my bag more tightly over my notebook and walked headlong into the wind toward home.

There was a letter from Evan when I got there, smudged, and slightly damp from the rain.

He had drawn a forest on the envelope again, a couple holding hands as they walked through it.

Dear Imogen,

My forest will be exhibited at the Night Market the day before Halloween. I hope you will be my guest there.

And after.

Evan

Evan had to be at the Night Market early to supervise the setup of his work, so I asked Marin if she wanted to walk over with me.

“I’m working with Gavin that evening, so we’re going together. But I’ll see you there.

“Oh, and Gavin says wear your charm where people can see it. Especially at the Market,” Marin said, pulling her own hourglass out so it was visible over her shirt.

“Why?”

“It’s like some kind of secret sign. People will ‘treat us well’ because of it, whatever that means.”

“Fun. I always wanted to be in a secret club. I’ll see you there.”

When I got ready that evening, I made sure my charm dangled over the scarf wrapped around my neck. The air was cool enough to flush my cheeks as I walked across Melete’s darkening grounds, and I arranged my scarf more securely. The stars winked into place above me, and bats skittered across the tops of the trees. I stopped, stood, and let the night, all its possibilities, fill me.

I heard the music before I saw the Night Market’s lights.
Old-fashioned, calliope-style. The kind you’d hear at a carousel. There were more fire pits along the paths this time, and the fairy lights strung through the trees glowed orange, making everything flame-kissed and autumnal. The air shimmered, a shook foil, as I walked into the Night Market.

There was a booth at the front selling maple sugar candy formed into shapes more likely to be found in a fantastic bestiary than in a candy store—I picked a gryphon, a basilisk, and a unicorn.

“How much do I owe you?” I asked the woman, a chain of flames tattooed across her collarbone, who handed me my bag.

“Nothing.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You wear the hourglass, and so it’s a gift to you.”

My hand went to my throat where the charm hung. This was what Gavin meant. “Thank you,” I said.

She nodded, watching after me as I left.

It seemed I wasn’t going to be allowed to pay for anything. The perfumery that had been at the previous Market was there again, and I was given a vial that smelled like autumn distilled—the rich darkness of loam and leaf mold, the warm spice of the harvest, the metallic hint of winter to come. “It would be our honor if you accepted this as a gift,” the man working there said. His hair was the same riot of flames as the leaves on the trees.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Please.” He placed the bottle in my hand and folded my fingers around it.

I hesitated before deciding to get hot chocolate. It felt awkward, to be given things like this. Undeserved. Like I shouldn’t look at anything with interest, because then someone would feel obliged
to give it to me. But at least with the hot chocolate, I could leave a tip, assuage some of the awkwardness I felt that way.

But the chocolatier set her hand over the tip jar. “We don’t take any of your money. Not if you wear the hourglass. Bad luck to those who do.”

“Bad luck?” I asked.

She nodded. “We’re paid in other ways. Don’t leave your money here.”

“Thank you, then.” I’d have to ask Gavin about what exactly the charms meant when I saw him. It was obviously something more than just the extra time that Beth had told me about.

The calliope had grown louder the farther I walked into the Market. There were more vendors here this time—it took up more space in the Commons than before, so much so that I half-expected to see booths tucked next to the studios. I wound through the crowds of people, some already costumed for Halloween, looking for the source of the music.

The first of Evan’s trees stood close to the Market’s center. The others stretched out from it—the forest walking in among the people. They looked wilder out in the night, illuminated by flame and fairy lights. Like the ancient skeletons of a forest, twisting and reaching toward the sky, the shadows cast by the flames part of the artwork, too.

The trees had been arranged to form a path, leading away from the lights and people of the Market proper. Walking through was like walking into someplace secret, the glimpses of other people like scenes from a play, figures from someone else’s imaginings. A walk into Narnia, or Wonderland, or some other fantastic place, tucked away just out of sight of the real. Velvet gowns looked like dresses made of rose petals, and wings climbed from backs, so cleverly
attached that it was impossible to see the joins. Everything was one drop more, one shade closer to the fantastic.

The path drew in on itself, and then opened up into a grove of metal and light and shadow. In the center of the grove, a carousel spun.

It hovered on the edge of impossible. Metal animals, rearing horses, prowling cats, a dragon, serpentine and clever. Like the trees, but not, more living than skeleton, metal hearts beating inside their bodies. The lights played over them, and they looked almost as if they breathed as they turned in slow circles. I watched in awe.

“Do you like it?” Evan asked.

I had been so entranced by the carousel, I hadn’t noticed him until he was next to me. “This is what you made?”

Pride on his mouth as he nodded.

“It’s extraordinary. The only way I could like it better is if I could ride it.”

“Once Gavin’s here, you can.”

“Are you serious?” I grinned like a child.

“Completely.” Evan smiled, and oh, I was glad I was a grown-up.

“This is the project you were working on? The one he commissioned?” I tried to fit the bestiary brought to life with what I knew of Gavin.

“It’s part of it, yes.” He kept his eyes on what he had made, watching.

“What is he going to do with it?” Gavin lived in New York, where the National Ballet Theater was based, when he wasn’t here. The carousel was not the sort of thing that would fit in a city apartment.

“I cannot spill his secrets, even to you.”

“So formal,” I teased.

Evan held my gaze, solemn and silent.

Then Gavin and Marin arrived. Gavin walked around the carousel, then stopped in front of Evan. “It’s even more than I’d hoped. Very well done.”

Evan nodded, accepting the praise. A man wearing a Green Man mask lifted the chain, the guardian of the forest granting us passage, and Evan handed me onto the back of one of those wild, rearing horses. The reins were heavy red silk, and I held them as the carousel spun. Slowly at first, then faster and faster, just to the edge of dizziness. The whirl turned the other riders into blurs, painting them with impossibility, until we all looked like something from a fairy tale.

The spinning continued after the music stopped, after we had climbed down, but that was because Evan’s hands were tangled in my hair, tangled in the chain around my neck, and his mouth was on mine. The wildness, the heat of him, and the magic of the night.

But he, he wasn’t magic. He was solid and real under my hands and I craved that realness. I broke the kiss just long enough to say “Come home with me, now,” and to hear him answer “yes.”

The walk back to my house took forever, and I wanted to grab Evan’s hand and run, or throw him down on the grass and press myself on top of him.

I didn’t.

We walked. Like people who weren’t ready to burst from our skin with lust. Like it was nothing, this air that we walked through, that made a night so silent I could feel its weight on my skin, and even that didn’t muffle the thunder in my racing heart. Like we had forever, like there was no rush, like you couldn’t strike sparks from the heat that burned in my blood.

We walked through my front door, locking it behind us, and quietly up three twisting flights of stairs to my door.

The door closed.

I pressed Evan against the wall, kissing him as if he were my breath. Our hands tore at each other’s clothing. No finesse, just speed. Then his skin was hot against mine and his fingers were inside me and I bit into his shoulder so that he cried out when I came.

The sheets on the bed rumpled beneath us, and I traced the scars his art had left on his skin with my mouth. We rolled over, and his hands spanned my ribs, tight, tighter as I took him inside me. I moved over him, arched back. He reached between us and pressed rough fingers against my clit and I came again, trembling.

We collapsed into each other and, still tangled, fell asleep.

Dawn was pinking the edges of the sky when he kissed me awake. “I have to go.” He was already dressed.

“I can’t convince you to be late?” I sat up, the sheets pooling around my waist.

He closed his eyes, and a muscle flickered along his jawline. “If only.”

“Well,” I said. “Good morning, then.”

“Good morning, Imogen.” He closed the door behind him.

Ariel was in the kitchen when I finally made it downstairs for coffee. “That is some truly spectacular sex hair you have going on, Imogen.”

My hand went to the back of my head, which was simultaneously fuzzy and knotted. I could feel myself turn strawberry red. Didn’t matter that I was neither ashamed nor embarrassed, my complexion thought I should be a blushing virgin. I poured coffee. “It was some spectacular sex.”

“Good for you,” Ariel said. “So are you going to let him scare your pants off again for Halloween tonight?”

“No, I’ve got a thing.”

She snickered. “I just bet you do.”

I did, though, and not what Ariel thought. The letter had arrived the week before Halloween, the stationery embossed with the same stylized version of the Greek letter
mu
that had been on the paper that Beth had wrapped my hourglass charm in. It had given instructions for a meeting Halloween night, on the Commons. For those of us who had been chosen, the letter said. After the reactions of the people at the Night Market to the charm, I felt even more like we were all going to be inducted into some secret society. Which, honestly, seemed kind of great.

As the day went on, I was less and less able to focus. Eventually, I resigned myself to the probable necessity of rewriting every word I had managed to get on paper, and I went to find Marin.

“Are you ready?” Marin asked.

“As I’m going to be,” I said. The letter had been cryptic, not offering much in the way of detail except when and where. I didn’t particularly like surprises.

Mourning the chance to wear my planned Susan Pevensie costume for Halloween—I had put together a full-out Narnian queen outfit, and accessorized with lipstick, nylons, and a fan made of party invitations—I had dressed for practicality. Jeans, boots, jacket. Marin looked much the same, though her coat was fleece and mine was leather. At least we looked like we were going to the same place.

As we walked across the grounds, we could see traces of Halloween celebrations. Some people had gone all out. “Oh, look, it’s Isaac!” Marin waved to a genial-looking patchwork of a man, strapped to what looked like a laboratory table on the roof of a house. Occasional flashes of light strobed across him. Isaac waved back, and blew her a kiss.