Lament - Мэгги Стифватер

Luke peered over my shoulder at the empty house, barely visible through the sheet of rain. "I don't want you to be by yourself. I'll come with."

We jumped out of the car and ran to the back door, where I fumbled with keys, rain pouring over my fingers, and got us inside as quickly as possible. Sliding into the kitchen, I looked over at Luke and groaned.

He looked down at his soaked shirt and said, his voice mild, "Well, you did take three years to unlock the door, so what did you expect? Where's the dryer? I'll throw it in while you get changed."

The idea of him shirtless stuck my tongue to the bottom of my mouth, so I just pointed toward the laundry room and retreated to my room, where I rejected the frumpy blue cardigan Mom would have worn in favor of a fitted white button-down and a khaki skirt. I liked to think it was an outfit that said professional but sexy. As opposed to Mom's blue cardigan set, which said something more like frigid puritan music geek.

I returned downstairs, picking my way carefully in the rain-gray darkness. It was weird to be home without the rest of my family. Without the hum of the TV, or Delia's loud voice, or the constant whir of Mom's standing mixer, the house seemed very still and empty; the only sound of life was the slow, rhythmic pulsing of the dryer in the kitchen. I thought of Luke standing down there, waiting for me, and the same thrill of nerves I got before playing in public trembled down my arms.

I didn't trust myself with him.

I moved into the dim kitchen and picked out Luke's pale form. He was leaning his hands on the counter, looking out the window. Without his shirt, I could see how his body truly was--how every inch was muscle, a perfectly tuned, deadly machine. Shallow scars traced a mysterious map across his shoulders, leading my eye to the enigmatic gleam of the gold band around his biceps. I knew he heard me come in by the subtle tilt of his head, but he stared out into the rain for a few seconds longer before turning.

"That was fast." When he turned, I saw the largest scar of them all; a huge, white, amorphous shape near his heart. I didn't bother to disguise my curiosity and closed the space between us; my eyes narrowed when I saw just how large the wound must have originally been.

"What's that from?"

He didn't reply, but his eyes wore the same dead expression they'd had after I'd read his mind. I reached out with careful fingers and touched the raised, uneven scar tissue, felt the shiny skin. As I did, I fell into a memory.

It was one I'd seen before, back in the tomb. But this time I got a longer look. His back to an old wooden building, Luke held his wicked dagger point against the skin on his shoulder, lightly tracing a careful line down to the tore, as if trying its strength. Beads of blood raised up in its wake and I shuddered at the expression in his eyes--like there was nothing behind them. The next cut was stronger but still unflinching, slicing into his skin and skipping over the tore. And the next was stronger still. But of course it was madness. If he was trying to rid himself of the tore, it was a fool's errand; the tore itself wasn't affected by the knife. It stayed solidly around his biceps as he tore his arm to ribbons, a viscous blanket of red obscuring each new slash and covering the gold of the armband.

Finally, Luke lowered the knife, hand trembling, and I sighed with relief. But too soon. Fast as a viper strike, he dug the blade into his own chest, twisting it viciously. His hands slid from the grip at last, and his head fell back against the building, his body twisting and arching.

I gasped, pulling myself free of the memory with effort and blinking my wet eyes. "You tried to kill yourself." Saying it out loud made the memory real. I stared at him, repeating, "You tried to kill yourself?"

Luke swallowed, still as a statue beneath my fingers.

Trying to put this piece into his puzzle, I traced the pale lines that coursed over his tore. "Why would you do that to yourself?"

"You saw." He looked into my eyes, unflinching. "Why wouldn't I?"

Sixteen years of Catholic church filled my mouth with answers, but they all tasted like paste and I was silent. Suddenly it occurred to me that I didn't have to have an answer-- that I didn't want to speak. Instead, I hugged him, throwing my arms around his lean frame and pressing my cheek against the scar on his shoulder where he'd first traced the blade.

Luke lay his head on top of mine, his breaths counting the minutes, my heartbeat slowing to fall in step with his. Then I felt his mouth, his breath hot on my cool skin, push against my neck, at once tender and insistent. Part of me urged me to stop him while I still had my senses, but the better part of me wanted it too badly--wanted to feel him lay a path of kisses up my neck, under my ear, along my jaw, until his mouth found mine and stole my breath. I couldn't think, with the musky smell of his skin pressed so close to me and the feel of his fingers tangled in my pony-tail. My brain screamed too far! but my body moved on its own accord, pressing closer to him.

A sudden, stabbing pain in my heart forced a gasp out of me, and I felt Luke's body stiffen. He pushed away, his hand moving up to his chest, his fingers against his skin, his eyes darkening.

As the pain flamed through my chest again, Luke shuddered, squeezing his eyes shut.

"What's happening?" I whispered. But the finger of fire dragged across my heart again, and this time, Luke's body spasmed and he crashed against the counter, sending a pot lid clattering to the floor. He reached a shaking hand toward the counter before collapsing down next to the pot lid on the tile. The tore glowed white hot on his arm, illuminated by some sort of fearsome magic.

It was only then I figured it out. This wasn't my pain--it was his. What I was feeling was only a shadow, some sort of sympathetic pain caused by the weird magic I'd performed on us in the graveyard. I dropped down next to him as he shivered in time with the waves of fire that rolled through my chest.

"Luke." I touched his face, and he focused his eyes on me, biting his lip. "What's happening to you?"

It was worse than I could have imagined, feeling his body shaking underneath my hand and seeing him work so hard not to cry out. His voice was tight. "I'm--being-- punished."

191 I jerked my head up, looking at the windows, trying to see what could have been watching us.

Luke, seeing my gesture, forced out, "For--what I told--Eleanor." He groaned, and curled his body tightly around his clenched fists.

I remembered Eleanor's face then, the puzzlement on her face when she asked Luke why he couldn't kill me, just a girl. Faerie bitch! I wasn't just a girl. I was a girl with freakdom off the charts. I reached into the tangle of limbs and pressed my hand against Luke's chest, feeling the thump of his heart, slow and labored, each lethargic beat slamming against his ribs.

I closed my eyes, trying to think about the feeling I got when I was moving clovers across tables.

In my head, I saw the fire in Luke's chest, burning brightly across the wings of a frantic dove.

The flames, reflected orange and white in the dove's black eye, ate one feather after another, curling them black and useless.

"Go out," I whispered. But the fire kept burning, and the dove opened its beak and stared at the sky, eyes frozen and empty with the pain. I had to concentrate, to focus on the problem. What made fire go out? Lack of oxygen, right? I imagined the air sucking away from the flames, fleeing from the heat, leaving nothing but emptiness for the fire to feed on.

The fire flickered and diminished on one of the wings, and the ache in my own heart flickered in response.

"No," gasped Luke, and I opened my eyes to see him shaking his head. "No, don't do it. Just leave me alone."

"Why?"

"She'll know." Beneath my hand, his heartbeat crashed convulsively. "She'll--know what you can do. She's--only --guessing--now."

I could see the pain written on every muscle in his body. "I can't just watch you like this."

"I--lied to her. Told her you--weren't--a threat." He turned his face away, bitten lip bleeding.

"Please--Dee-- don't."

I didn't know what to do. I was so afraid that he would die there on the kitchen floor, lying next to the pot lid on the tile. If he could die; after seeing the knife blade stuck in his chest, I wasn't so sure he could. But I knew he could feel pain, and watching him writhing on the floor was harder for me to bear than physical pain of my own.

I lay down on the cold tile beside him and curled my body next to his, wrapping my arms around his shuddering muscles and burying my face in his neck. And lying like that, together, him growing hotter and hotter and me squeezing tighter and tighter, I waited until he stopped shivering and finally lay still, breathing hard. Knowing, the whole time, that I could have stopped it. I think it was the hardest decision I had ever made.

Luke opened his eyes and lay a hand on my cheek, his words barely loud enough to be heard, "Thank you."

Maybe he hadn't even said it out loud.

FIFTEEN

 I didn't want to go to the party. It had seemed pointless to go in light of Granna's condition; now, after watching Luke tortured in the kitchen, it seemed downright idiotic. I had a horrible sense that time was precious and that entertaining a bunch of rich lawyers was a waste of it.

"Life has to go on," Luke said when I told him I wanted to blow the party off. "You can't just stop. What else would you do?"

Spend it with you. Lie on my bed with you and memorize your smell and the sound of your voice so no one could ever take it away from me.

"Dee." He ran a hand down my arm, twining his fingers in mine. "You've got to go on as normal. If you don't--They'll come in to finish my job for me."

So we packed my harp in the car and went on our way to the Warshaws. As Luke had promised earlier, the sky was clear and fresh, the only signs of the storm already disappearing behind the trees. While Luke drove, lost in his thoughts, I slouched in the passenger seat and typed an epic text message to James--confessing all, like we always used to do. For as long as we'd been friends, we'd relied on the written (well, typed) word to convey thoughts that seemed too embarrassing or serious to talk about in person. I remembered getting a long text from James about guardian angels and whether or not everyone had one, and another one about whether I thought being an introvert was a mental illness, and I remembered sending a long one about how I thought I'd never fit in and another about music as a possible time-traveling device-- so long that it took an hour to punch in all the letters on the cumbersome keypad. This one was a bit shorter than that. james, i should've been honest with u from the start, but i was afraid of hurting ur feelings or ruining our friendship, i've been spending a lot of time w luke & i think i'm falling in love w him. i know it's crazy and too soon but i can't help it. somehow he's in this faerie thing, but i don't know how yet. i read his mind that's one of the new freaky things i can do i guess & i found out he'd killed a lot of people, i know this will sound messed up but i think he was forced to do it. he's supposed to kill me too but he won't & now i'm afraid whoever's behind it is going to do something awful to him. i don't know what to do. maybe i'm supposed to save him. plz dont be angry w me i need ur help.