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My hands come into focus first.
In the dark, grey from black, and I realise, in my cold sweat of terror, I’ve woken tangled up in the blankets such that my hands look stuck together into some horrid mutilation. It is just an illusion of the dark, but for a blinding few minutes I am certain, more than certain, I’ve done something horrible to myself, or, worse, that it is mama’s hand laying over mine as she did when I was little. The hair on my neck sticks up. The side of the bed and its yawning, open fall haunts just beyond my senses; lurking there is something terrible and predatory.
Every minute spent ignorant draws it closer but peeking, looking, is so far away, so dangerous; it’s going to eat me!
I rip my hands free and sit, sweating and winded, curled over myself. The blanket is still tangled around my legs. I whip my head around, searching in the dark mass of shapes wildly for the thing hunting me. This close, I should be able to smell it, hear it, feel it’s body heat. My neck prickles. With my stomach covered, it will strike there. I won’t struggle. I won’t have the time.
I stick a nail between my teeth, chewing until it breaks, more, until it hurts, until my teeth have nothing but skin to chew on; with the pain comes the throbbing, frantic beat of my heart. And after that, my eyes, finally, adjust.
But there is nothing there.
Just the walls, the old furniture, the door hanging agape. That isn’t right. It should be shut, shouldn’t it? All at once I remember where I am, who is near, and my fear dissipates into the mundane unease of lingering nightmare.
My mind lulls to childhood. How had I banished it then? I had Sucre, bleached and straining, little white lamb. He would bring me all the comfort in the world, as only a stuffed animal could. When I looked into his button eyes there would be no sneering, no pity, no joke I would be left out of, no reflection of terror. Nothing but black buttons.
But Dolores might see, might ask, might have to comfort me babbling about childish things while holding my childhood toy. I can’t stand it. Every image and where it would lead is worse than the last. If I could just keep quiet, if she would just not figure out what I was saying, if she just put her hands like that or didn’t ask why or how or when, if I didn’t let her see him...
‘What if’ and ‘if only’ and ‘maybe then’ are all lies; she would see me as a child, and I want desperately for her to never think of me that way.
The house is too quiet.
The walls are the same as always. Solid things. I want to reach out, to touch and reassure myself, but uncurling, sitting up properly to put my back to the door and clamber over the headboard ... my stomach hurts just thinking about it. I chew on my skin, the paranoia tingling down my spine again. I look around the room.
Miss Igraine’s hand snaps over my mouth before I can scream.
She chases me, or it feels like she should. I hit the headboard from how violently she hits me and from my own desperate flinch to get away. She looms above, like an oak that refuses to fall, and only her arm moves back with me to keep her hand on my mouth. Her palm is slightly rough, and with that small anomaly— had I ever, really, been touched gently by her bare hands before?— everything else filters in.
I’ve never seen her in night clothes; she is, strangely, never in them around me. Seeing her now, so casual, makes me think it was deliberate, a snub, another thing she has done to hurt me for the crime of being near her. I can’t tell the colour, perhaps a purple or blue; something petal soft and easy on the eyes, probably named something equally demure like lilac or periwinkle. There is lace along the edge of her shorts and the sleeves of her button up shirt. The buttons stop just above her breasts, and the collar instead ties shut at her clavicle with what should be a bow. It has come askew, one loop and the rest dangling down. She is too deliberate in how she dresses for it to be something like a mistake.
“Do you always exaggerate?” She asks. Her voice is the same as ever, “Don’t be so rude.”
She’s absurd.
I don’t know how to respond when she let’s go. Igraine— Miss Igraine, Dolores’ voice reminds me, for she is assuredly not my peer or friend despite the months I’ve known her — pulls the blankets free of my legs and sets about righting them. That’s even more absurd; Igraine and c ar ing for me are so far apart she must be making fun of me for not being able to sleep right. But wrestling with her for a blanket in the early morning that she is only untangling would be the height of petulance. She is not Dolores, who might indulge me in that.
My tongue is dry, like leather. What do I even say that she will entertain? “Miss Igraine?”
She sits on the bed after fixing it. I squirm away. Her voice is even gentler than mine; her hand to my cheek should be tender, but I wither under her touch, “Why are you awake?”
“Me? I—”
“Your door was open.”
“I don’t think it—”
“—You’ll freeze like that. Shouldn’t you know better, growing up where you did? Are you cold?” Her hand moves to my forehead, and I watch it do so.
I pull the blanket over my knees, recognising her tone instantly as the one mama used to use when she was sure, beyond doubt, I was a hopeless little child. I say, “I’m not cold.”
“If you took dance seriously,” Igraine flicks the hair from my face. I can tell all she heard was a whined I’m not a child and, like Dolores, felt compelled to step into the role of dispensing simple fact. Dolores cares for my feelings; Igraine smiles and berates me. “you would be sleeping, not staying up all hours of the night.”
I focus on her hands. I hoped they would be like Dolores’, infinitely softer; they seemed indomitably rough the last time she touched me, evil, like they were made for hurting me. I had thought, hoped, it was because of the danger, that the rush of familiarity was a mistake of fear. Unyielding pressure, the cold sure feeling of her hands and the warm, rich tone of her laughter that was so eager to tell me she didn’t care that it hurt.
My hopes are dashed.
Her hands are softer than mine or anyone back home but there is the hint, just a bite, of scratchiness from calluses not quite sanded down. The hint of work that is more than just playing her instrument. It’s dramatic, almost; she is so put together, so like Dolores, so like Sorina, with all sorts of little beauty rituals to do that Dolores, with a smile condescending and patient, always says is normal. Always pursuing some ideal of care that is hopelessly unfamiliar. Her hands must be a choice, then. Something to add flair. Why not set herself apart as she does with so many other things?
But it bothers me.
The most work I have ever seen her do is kneel in a garden, not for food, not to forage, but to plant decorative flowers. Dolores told me she picks them later in the summer, styles bouquets for the house so that it smells of them until the height of winter; peony, snapdragon, roses, marigolds and scores of others that Igraine plants and upends and replants at her whim. Even, Dolores had shared sweetly, she styled them as gifts. For Sorina, for Dolores, after each performance another bouquet; for each birthday or holiday or every day she wants to draw out a smile. Dozens and dozens and dozens.
It isn’t terribly hard work, not compared to farming. She has clothes for it, picked out specially, because doing it is leisure. But her hands have a hint of a scratch, dryer than they should be with all her luxuries. Almost familiar. Tantalisingly, as she caresses my face, different from Dolores’ hands. Not worse, not better. Just different.
I sit up, but her hands stays on my cheek, “I just... I’m sure I locked it. The door.”
“Do you not remember?” Igraine mocks. I wait, tensely, but she doesn’t say anything else, just smiles like we’re sharing a secret and I am walking on a thin measure of her patience by playing stupid.
“I remember,” I mutter, then, louder, “I do remember. You’re twisting it.”
I don’t look at her face, though I am burning to know if she did it on purpose, clicking her tongue, pulling her hand away so that her fingers slid against my cheek to emphasise their feel, the true bite of her nails threatening to pierce skin. Is everything she does for the purpose of torment? Her wrist is what I focus on, where the small blood vessels are blue against her pale skin, so I can ignore the heat in my face.
She rebukes me, “Annette.”
I can’t help it. I glance, quickly, without lingering, at her face to see the disappointed tsk she does, lips full, expression soft. I like the way she says my name. The soft rasp of her accent as she curls the syllables around her tongue, it comes out strong and lovely. There is meaning, hidden in those carefully enunciated syllables, that is, nonetheless, one of the times she is not insulting me. I wonder again how she knew mama, with her strange, careful way of saying my name. But she couldn’t have known her that well. Surely?
Maybe that’s why I open my mouth when her fingers trail down my jaw. My voice is wobbly, “Why are you awake, Miss Igraine?”
“You,” she says, as easily as a prayer in church, “are so embarrassingly tepid.”
I look at the meat of her palm, the line of her wrist and up to her shoulder. I still can’t look her in the eyes, “You said something like that last time.”
“Did I?”
“It started like this.” I accuse.
“I don’t remember that.”
“Yes, you do!”
Igraine hums, and she makes a point of using one finger to push on my shoulder until I hit the headboard again, “Keep your voice down.”
Her finger lingers, and I follow it, worried, until she touches her own cheek and I am trapped by her eyes. I mumble, “You did do it. I know you did.”
“Annette,” she laughs, softly, turning her attention to the way her shirt falls, the ribbon at her clavicle. Her brows draw up like she is surprised to see it uneven, and she sets about fixing it even as she talks. Returned to perfectly symmetrical under perfectly clever hands. I want to focus on her words, but her fingers brushing the hint of skin beneath her shirt as she fusses distract me and all I catch of her words is, “If it happened and if it was as terrible as you think it was, why are you making me stay?”
I look away and deflect, “I am not.”
“You liked it.”
“I didn’t.”
“No?” Igraine leaned back, “Are you sure?”
“I am not making you stay.”
“It’s all the same,” Igraine purses her lips like she is lost in thought. It’s a lie, I think. A sort of performance, building suspense, anticipation. When she looks at me again I startle; she takes my hand loosely and rubs the skin of my knuckles, “Isn’t it? Talking, expecting responses? Holding on, trying for attention, hurting yourself for sympathy?”
“I don’t,” I pull my hand away, she hums like she had expected it, “I don’t do that.”
“Do you think I have any to give you?”
All I can focus on is the sharpness of the colour of her eyes. Strange, warm amber set in her cold porcelain face; in the dark she seems even less alive, her eyes even more bright, the warm undertone of her skin that makes her seem so brilliant in daylight has been washed away and left only the predatory parts of her in it’s place.
“Well?” she says, stressing it like she needs to call my attention. “What could you possibly do that requires sympathy? Following Hortencia’s footsteps a bit too closely?”
I lie, biting my tongue on how quick I say the words, “Of course not— I don’t even—”
She leans in, too close, and my throat closes up.
I had wanted to sound indignant, venomous as mama could be hoping the gulp of familiarity would make it more of a deterrent, but all I managed was surprised and flustered. I look at her lips by some animal instinct, not for how soft they are but for what they hide. Her mouth, relaxed and softly unconsciously parted, is all sorts of inviting, just as the glide of her tongue and flash of her teeth is threatening.
I wait, breathing carefully, for something else, something more.
A movement, a smile, anything; a quirk of the brow, or the fiddling of her hands against something else, another cruel observation or bald-faced insult. Maybe a look away, a glance that betrays some nerves, a shift of the shoulder that conveys some measure of awkwardness. Anything, anything, I’d take anything to know she cared about my reaction enough to want to see it.
I startle when she grabs my throat, on me, baring down. I had forgotten that only Dolores tolerated my staring, and now, stuck, I don’t have a choice but to see every bit of disdain Igraine has for me. How can her smiles change so quickly? Nothing but how she holds herself changes, but she is suddenly cruel, full of ire for everything I am.
Her voice is cold. “You’re making a scene.”
She reminds me, then, of Sorina; the same cold, deceptive tone of voice, soothing and soft and dismissive. The sort of voice that makes a lie easy to swallow, makes it sound like the truth, unshakably confident, makes an insult something that can be hotly, keenly debated until it’s lost all meaning. But where offence would linger in the curve of Sorina’s cheeks and the frown sitting delicately on her mouth and the icy certainty in her eyes, Igraine’s lips quirk upwards as if compelled, her whole face softens, and she seems for all the world nothing but pleased at what she’s doing and has already done.
It’s a trap. It’s a trap, and it’s bitten me through the neck.
The room is so empty, nothing to hide behind, nothing solid that I can squeeze into that no one else could. How would I do it? If she let me go, could I even run out of the room fast enough? Could I roll out of her reach, or under the bed? But who would believe me if I kicked up a fuss, made a mess, disturbed my barely tolerated place? Sorina has made no secret of looking for a chance to throw me away, and Igraine will serve it on a silver platter. If I did that to Dolores, if I ruined the one place she found for me, the one place that would keep me, if I made a mistake while she wasn’t here to soothe tempers...
My head hurts thinking about it.
I look at the ceiling, furtive, paranoid, alone. Wasn’t she just—?
Wasn’t she on me? Wasn’t she right next to me?
“It’s good that you’re keeping it to yourself,” Igraine sighs. She is so far away, when I turn to look, owlish; it is like she is hasn’t moved at all from where she first settled down. The same way of sitting, fussing with the ribbon on her shirt. That’s not right. Didn’t she already fix it? “You’re going to worry someone with fantasies like that.”
“I—” I do my best to look at her nose rather than her eyes, sitting up furtively, “I don’t understand.”
“I am not generally opposed to fantasy,” Igraine goes on, folding her hands, with their carefully kept nails, together over her knee, “even ones about myself.”
“It wasn’t— It did happen. You’re lying.”
“But it is crass and deviant to tell me about it,” Igraine looks at me then, her hair falling over her shoulder in a shiny sheet of gold-threads, eyes merry and promising. Her voice is painfully, thickly nostalgic, “‘Sia.”
I ball my hands into fists. I’m upset at how easily she upsets me. It’s barely a provocation, but all I’ve heard anyone say is how alike mama and I were, how I’m just like her, her spitting image, her unfortunate habits, her voice and her tenderness and her, her, her. Igraine has never done that before, so I know it is just to hurt, “I’m not.”
“Doesn’t everyone know.” Igraine replies.
My ears ring, after that.
I watch her mouth move and feel my own move, but nothing penetrates any deeper; sound reaches my ears and scrambles into static somewhere in my mind. Are we arguing, whispering, talking? I’m so terribly curious about it all, despite the bile in my throat that tastes, strangely, like nothing.
Fantasies, she had said, and spoken that pet name as sweet as a hummingbird on a flower, like it wasn’t the first time. How does she differ from Dolores, who had written of her entanglement with mama in poetic and obscene ways? Mama hadn’t bothered trying to hide those vivid letters more than tucking them away among her other older things. Why would Igraine say that, in such a way, as if she knew mama at all?
Did she?
She couldn’t have. I know mama’s letters and her keepsakes as well as I know my own hands, and never anywhere did any of the answers Dolores write mention Igraine. She was never in any photos, never underlined, never in little the notes mama had kept of rehearsal, never in her journals. Not her name, nor her description, not even a passing mention of a pianist. Looking at Igraine, I wonder if it was a deliberate expunge rather than a disinterest.
What was mama hiding?
Will Igraine tell me?
The world lightens as the moon comes out from behind the curtains Igraine pulls open. She fiddles with the rusted, squeaking latch even as the wind whistles angrily behind the glass. She opens it and it’s cold, freezing, but she leans into it without so much as a shiver. She is so tall against the sky. She could lean out as far as I could when I lean on the railing and not touch it at all, not have the rust or the peeling paint biting into her hands, only the breeze and what little of the ocean salt rises up here.
Though if she were in this room, if it were hers, I doubt any part of it would be peeling or rusting or old at all. If Igraine lived in here, she wouldn’t hesitate to ask Sorina to have things repainted, or for new furniture, or to have plants falling out of every available space a pot could fit into. The railings would be redone, the hinges not squeaking, the door not prone to randomly unlocking.
I am distracted by Igraine’s bare clavicle when she turns, the ribbon having snared on something— my hand? Wrapped around my finger is the loop, pulled tight. I don’t remember getting up but I’m standing in front of her and her mouth is moving, saying something; the window is closed, and the only chill comes from the floorboards. I pull my hand away, and the ribbon comes undone, slipping from my finger, falling apart like pieces of a broken plate scattering around the floor. She makes a noise, something throaty, a hum more satisfied than anything I’ve ever gotten from her before.
I understand, seeing her skin, why there are times she does not wear a necklace. The smooth, creamy plane is tantalisingly incomplete; for all the world, it seems as though something should be on it, sitting on it, touching it, covering it. It draws the eye better than a jewel or pendant ever could, and even when it is adorned it draws the hand to want to touch, to fiddle, to replace that adornment.
She steps closer, into my space, and that thing becomes my hand. Her shirt must be tailored to her shape, because losing the tight ribbon makes the fabric loose and despondent. My hand, touching her warm, sweet smelling skin, slides and throws one sleeve off her shoulder, forces the buttons to strain, and all at once I am looking at Igraine bare-shouldered and half-dressed and vain in her confidence.
“Annette,” Igraine tuts, “You aren’t listening at all.”
If I strain my eyes, I think there are little marks on her shoulder, travelling down to hide under her shirt. Bruises, or the natural divots of her skin coloured with shadow? I look into her eyes and lie, weakly, “Of course I am.”
“I didn’t believe Dol when she said you went off into fairy land like this. Another reminder of how close you two are, isn’t it.”
“I—”
“Am I warm?” She asks, pleasantly.
I go still, unsure of what to say.
She takes my hand, presses it deeper into her skin; she is warm, very warm, and standing very close. She stepped up to me, but it’s my fault. I should move, but my legs won’t listen; I encroach on her space with the stupidity of a mouse not knowing it’s being menaced. If this is being menaced. Stalked? Is it, when she is comfortable and smiling and inviting in ways that are so subtle yet infinitely loud? I touch her shoulder with my other hand, a divot that seems too dark in the barely-there-light, but it is barely bigger than my fingertip.
She must see my eyes drifting, lower and lower, following the little dots and then the line of her shirt. I’m staring at her buttons, the top one pulled so tight through its buttonhole, and just under that is the rest of her sternum, sitting between her breasts that are, unbelievably, very close to my face. The veins on them are so prominent, gliding up and down her skin to more intimate areas.
Her dishevelled state reminds me of the dipping, low collars on every one of Dolores’ chemises. But Dolores’ skin is warm, in touch and look, and the fit of her clothes is so perfect that the shape is scandalous, on or off her. This is... Igraine is... Igraine seems so cold, porcelain, and it makes the heat of her more enticing, the shape of her clothes like some carefully draped wrapping.
She moves my hand down and I spook, flinching away.
Her hand is bigger than mine and traps it so easily, and this close I can see the points of her dark-painted nails stark against her own skin, and more than just the heat of her against my hand is all of her against me. She keeps my hand between her breasts. Almost, I— if she let me, I would. That is, that I, that she would. That we would, that is. I would lean into her, touch her more, if she let me.
She doesn’t.
Igraine pulls me off with a smile and I stumble, my hand trapped in hers, thumb stroking along my palm. I barely hear her voice, “You have no worldly idea what you’re doing.”
I retort, reflexively, “I do.”
Igraine makes a sound like a hum, lingering close to a giggle but never reaching it. I want so badly to hear it. She squeezes my hand a second too long, too hard, and then the world spins as she picks me off the floor like a loose bit of paper and carries me back to bed. She leans over me, just a moment, and maybe she says something cruel and dismissive, or maybe she doesn’t say anything at all.
She lingers, looking at my face.
And then she is gone, the door is shut, the room cold, my skin cooling. I sit and stare at the door and listen to the wind outside, echoing the cacophony of fresh questions I couldn’t possibly ask.