Roses and Rot (30 page)

“That is what usually happens,” Beth said, when I told her about it later. “There’s always an explanation: ‘Someone made that’ or
‘artists are eccentric’ are built-in covers for nearly anything that happens at Melete. There are some years where not all of the residents know about the Fae, or the tithe.”

That seemed almost impossible to believe, that there could still be people here who didn’t know what kind of a place this was. Except. I hadn’t known, until Halloween, when there was no choice for me but to know. I had explained away all of the strangenesses that had happened: I was tired. I needed to eat something. It was stress, or shadows in the woods. If I hadn’t been chosen, or hadn’t lived in a house with other people who were, it was completely possible that I could have spent my entire time here willfully ignorant of the other world that Melete was part of.

“So they think they’re seeing next-gen animatronics.”

“Or performers rehearsing for a play, or whatever else they can wedge into the category of artistic expression. For some people, the lie is so much easier to believe than the truth, that they’ll talk themselves out of seeing what is right in front of them.”

“And the secret never gets out,” I said.

“And the secret never gets out. Not even the most creative of the common rumors about Melete comes close to the truth. That’s helped, of course, by the prohibition on direct speech about the Fae and the tithe, but it’s astonishing how little is spoken about when you consider everything that goes on.”

“The Fae dancing at parties and appearing as sea monsters in a residence’s moat,” I said, and shrugged. “I wouldn’t believe me.”

“Neither would I.” She poured jasmine tea into a cup with jasmine flowers painted around the rim. “You haven’t changed your mind about the tithe.”

“No,” I said. “I’m still sure.” The equinox was in three days. Campus was beginning to green and blossom, winter melting away
to puddles, the trickles of the thaw a hundred small rivers, all running down to join the Mourning.

“And you can compete with—leave, if necessary—your sister?” she asked.

“I want to be chosen,” I said.

Beth met my gaze, held it. “All right. Then we should talk about what will happen at the selection.”

“It’s not just a deadline?” I asked.

“No. You’ll present your work. You’ll read a piece of it. The Fae will be there. It’s more a performance than a portfolio review.”

It made sense. I could email a file, or hand someone a manuscript, but that wasn’t an option for everyone. Marin, for example, would need to dance.

“What will happen?”

“It will be—” Beth paused, looked away. Opened her mouth to speak, closed it. “It will be intense. Forgive the word, but nothing else seems honest.

“For me, it was the most difficult thing to get through.” Her eyes were very far away.

She was usually so straightforward. The fact that she wasn’t now scared me a bit.

“More so than the seven years?”

“Going to Faerie as the tithe was unpleasant. Knowing what I know now, I would still do it, because what has come after has been worth what it cost me, but I won’t pretend the experience itself was an enjoyable one. Still, while I was there, I had before me the knowledge that it wasn’t forever, and the knowledge of what I would gain at the end. I could hold on to those things, and use them to push away everything else.

“The selection—I was afraid. Ridiculous, perhaps, but what I
remember most is fear—fear that settled so deeply in me that I still can’t articulate it. I wish I could, Imogen. I feel like I’m failing you, and that’s not what I want.

“I’ll be there that night, if it helps for you to know that. Mentors, even past tithes, don’t participate in the selection, but I’ll be there. And your work is good. Remember that.

“Follow the instructions you’re given,” she said. “Be as strong as you can, and remember what you want.”

I knew what it was I wanted. It wouldn’t be difficult to remember it, no matter what the circumstances. But it was a want that was divided in two. To save Marin. To be better than her. Maybe the fairy tales were right to warn about the dark-haired older sister.

“I don’t know what else to do,” Helena said. We were on the front steps, wrapped in fleece jackets and blankets against the lingering chill, but the air was fresh and smelled like spring.

“For as long as I can remember, being this thing, this person who wrote poems on the way to being a serious and important artist, it was my job. That same length of time, I got told that if I did my job right, the asshole who contributed half my DNA would stop thinking with his dick and come back to my mom. I’d be a success; she’d be happy. That was how the story was supposed to go. That was my fairy tale ending.

“Finding out that my mom had lied to me, that none of that was ever going to happen, I just, I don’t know. I feel like I don’t know the point of me now.” She had pulled her hands back into her sleeves, tucking into herself.

“Do you still want to be a poet?”

“Maybe? I think so? I think I liked it. I liked the times when I felt like I was actually working toward being good at it. But I’ve never
really thought about being anything else. So maybe I’d rather be a chef, or an electrical engineer. I just, I don’t know. I don’t know how to know.”

“You could leave,” I said. “Go anywhere else. Figure out what you want, who you are.”

“But this is home. I’ve never lived any place that isn’t Melete, except when I lived in Faerie. I was homeschooled, and then I studied poetry with Janet, because what up-and-coming young poet wouldn’t give one of their limbs to work with Janet Thomas?

“I don’t know if I want to go. I don’t know what there is, besides here. At least here, I can keep her away.”

“Janet?” I asked.

Helena nodded. She looked like she hadn’t been sleeping. There were bruised crescents beneath her eyes. Even the shock of her fuchsia hair looked muted. “This year’s the first time I’ve ever lived in a house that she doesn’t have keys to.”

“Have you talked to Thomas?”

“I have this half-written email saved in my drafts folder. I keep opening it up and changing three words, and then closing it again. I want to talk to him. I think. But maybe not.”

“He seemed okay when I met him.”

“Yes, but he might have been trying to get into your pants.”

I laughed. “Point.”

Robins hopped across the green-brown grass, pulling worms from the dirt. A Frisbee flew from the house next door, skittering to a stop at our feet. I winged it back, shouting an apology when it hooked left and landed in the moat.

“What would you do if you couldn’t write?” Helena asked.

I sat back down on the step next to her. “For a while in college, I thought I wanted to study classics. I had this amazing mythology professor, and she read us the opening of
The Iliad
in ancient Greek,
and I could feel my hair stand on end. I wanted to do that. I took enough classes to get the minor.”

“What happened?”

“Latin verbs. And the fucking ablative.”

“And you can write,” she said.

“But if I had wanted it bad enough, I would have made myself learn the fucking ablative. Helena, you’re not even twenty-one, and you’ve published two collections. Of poetry. Which is not an easy thing to sell. You got in here. The issue isn’t whether you can write, it’s whether you want to. Don’t let Janet fuck with your head.”

She stood up, handed me the blanket. “When you put it like that, it almost sounds possible. I’ll think about it. I’ll think about all of it. Even emailing Thomas.

“Oh, and good luck tomorrow.”

The equinox. “Thanks. Do they make you go to this, too?”

She nodded. “I went before. When I was almost fourteen. Evan’s year. It was amazing. There weren’t that many choices, maybe twelve or thirteen, but they were all so good. So much talent. You could have filled stages, galleries. I wanted to weep from it, just being there.

“After, I imagined what I would do. Practiced the poems in my head. These perfect things that even the Fae would fall in love with.”

Her mouth twisted. “I was a complete fucking idiot, obviously. You’re right. I should leave. Because if I don’t, this is what my life will be like—being reminded of my failure every seven years.”

There was a letter from Evan in my mailbox. No decorations this time, no sketches on the envelope. Only my name.

I balanced it on my hand, as if the weight of it might give me a clue to its contents, contemplated throwing it away unread. Cursing my curiosity, I opened it.

Imogen—

This is not to tell you that I am sorry. Though I am, should you ever want to accept my apology.

It’s to wish you luck, tomorrow. I will be there, and I will be thinking of you.

Evan

I read it again and put it away. I wasn’t angry anymore, not really. Just tired, and achingly bored of the cliché of it all, the feeling that my humiliation had been part of a badly-written script. It wasn’t something I had the space to deal with. Not today.

Whether I might accept his apology or not, that wasn’t what mattered now. Tomorrow, the selection, that was what was important.

But first, there was one last fling before judgment day. The Night Market glittered like the last night at Versailles, light and sparkle and flash everywhere. The Fae weren’t even pretending to hide anymore, but walking openly in the Commons, clothed in the extraordinary.

They glittered, too, eyes like burning darkness, clothing bound with fireflies, footsteps that rang like bells, and hair that wept blood red honey from its ends.

The booths were almost as impossible as the Fae were, and this time, when I was offered gifts, I didn’t blush and demur. I knew what the stakes were, now. Knowing what I was prepared to sacrifice, I had no problem accepting all that they gave.

A silver dress, beaded like a fantasy from a speakeasy, and an opera cloak of black velvet, lined in green silk. A ring of tarnished
silver, curled around itself like a climbing rose. The thorns gripped my finger as I tried it on.

“It likes you,” the woman said. She wore a rose collar around her neck, and in the firelight, I couldn’t tell if the red drops were blood or rubies. “Wear it for luck.”

“I’ve seen you before,” I said. “The rose garden.”

“I am often there. But my roses are even more beautiful in Faerie. Do you not think you should come to see them? That you deserve to walk in those gardens?”

She moved like a serpent, grace and danger coiled, and I fought to keep from backing up, away from her regard. “I would love to come and see them.”

“So many roses. Like you’ve never seen. You’ll perfume them; they will grow in your bones like a trellis, and their petals will turn the color of your happiness, or your heartbreak.”

Good. Great.

She stepped so close our shadows merged, and trailed her finger across my lips. Her touch the swift burn of bee stings. She shuddered. “Delicious. Oh, I do hope it’s you.”

Her ring still clinging to my finger, I rushed from the booth and back into the crowd of people and Fae. I wanted, desperately, to see someone I knew. But while I recognized faces in the crowd, even saw silver glints around people’s necks—all our hourglasses—there was no one I could go to who would understand.