Mythos (The Descendants, #1)

by Vrinda Pendred

  * * *

  By the time they made it back to Itzy’s house, it was past 4am. Aidan parked the Jag outside her house and leaned back in his seat. He looked like he wanted to say something to her, but couldn’t think how to begin.

  ‘This was nice,’ she started for him.

  He let out a silent laugh, which made the corners of his mouth turn up and his eyes narrow. Then, as if he’d just made up his mind about something, he turned sideways and said, ‘There’s something I need to tell ye.’

  She turned in her seat too and leaned closer. ‘Yes?’

  He shook his head at himself. ‘I wasn’t entirely honest with you at the restaurant the other day.’

  Itzy’s eyes grew in surprise. ‘You weren’t?’

  Aidan sighed and drummed his fingers on his leg. ‘I wasn’t using ye for information. I just got scared of what I felt for ye. I didn’t know what to do with it, so I lied.’

  Itzy had no idea what to say to this. And he looked like there was more.

  ‘The truth,’ he went on, ‘is before he died, yer da made me promise to look after ye.’

  The floor seemed to have dropped from beneath Itzy’s feet. She gripped the edge of her seat to steady herself.

  ‘He…he made you…?’ she stammered.

  ‘I didn’t know yer name,’ Aidan continued his confession. ‘I just knew it was something Mayan. And I didn’t know where to find ye. Yer da had this idea that fate, like, would bring us together.’

  Itzy swallowed. Her mouth felt desperately dry. ‘Fate,’ she echoed in a whisper.

  ‘Aye,’ said Aidan. ‘I didn’t know if I believed him, then. But now I wonder if he was right. Because here we are.’

  He locked her eyes with his and held them there a long time.

  ‘Yes,’ she managed to find her voice. ‘Here we are.’

  ‘I don’t know what mystery I’ve got tangled up in,’ he said, ‘but…well, I’m glad yer tangled up in it with me.’

  Aidan reached for her hand and pressed it with his fingers. Warmth flowed into her. It tingled up her arms and spread through her body. Itzy didn’t know what he was doing to her, but it helped.

  ‘It’s late,’ he whispered. ‘I should let ye go.’

  No, she wanted to say. But all she did was nod.

  With great reluctance, Itzy stepped out of the car, her feet like lead, dragging with each step. It was so hard to leave him. Aidan climbed out too and stood with her.

  ‘Come for me again, yeah?’ she said.

  Aidan smiled. ‘Even if ye told me not to, I don’t reckon I could help it,’ he said. ‘Tonight, I kept toying with my phone, thinking, Should I or shouldn’t I? I couldn’t make up my mind, like, if this was the right thing to be doing. But now I’m thinking, maybe there was only ever one choice.’

  He kissed her one last time. His hands found their way into her long hair, pulling her to him with insatiable voraciousness. Itzy threw her arms around his neck and sank into the embrace. He breathed in as she breathed out, and vice versa, until she felt like she was hyperventilating and had to break apart for air.

  And the words rushed into her head against her will: I love you.

  She knew people went on about love at first sight, but she’d never believed in it before. Even with Ash, she had wanted him immediately, yes, but she hadn’t thought she loved him for months, and she’d never managed to say it out loud. But with Aidan, she was struggling not to let the words escape her.

  She might have given in to the urge if she hadn’t been so frighteningly certain he would have said he loved her too.

  Aidan got back in the car, leaving her standing stunned on the pavement. His kisses still lingered on her lips, she could feel the aftermath of his touch all over her skin, and she felt decidedly dizzy.

  She looked at him through the window. His image blotted out the car and the street and all sensible thoughts. All she could see were his eyes.

  Then he turned the car around and drove away, leaving her alone in the middle of the street.

  Itzy dragged her feet to her front door, fumbling through her bag for the key. When she was inside, she let out a long sigh. She closed the door and slid down its length, to the floor.

  Her phone beeped. When she retrieved it, she saw there was a message from Aidan:

  You’re beautiful.

  She smiled and counted her blessings that fate had brought her something good, at last.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  In the morning, Itzy was struck with a climbing sense of unreality. Had the previous night actually happened? She put her hand to her cheek, remembering the way it felt when Aidan kissed her.

  Then she remembered Seth, and the look on his face as he left.

  Her sense of fantasy fell apart and she groaned. She wasn’t sure how to move forward from that moment. But what could she do - avoid her brother forever, just so she wouldn’t have to see his housemate?

  Hm…maybe….

  Her hands still held her phone. She’d fallen asleep with it, hoping Aidan would text again. Now she saw a message from Devon on the screen. She opened it:

  Going to a film with Ash. Thought you’d like to join us. Do something normal, for a change.

  Normal. That sounded good, actually. She sent a reply, asking when and where she should meet them. Then she hopped out of bed and set to getting dressed.

  Her body hadn’t relinquished the thrill she had felt with Aidan, and it left her bright and jittery. The result was that she stole into her mother’s room and rummaged through her things. Itzy came away with a pair of black jeans and a tank top so red it practically glowed.

  She dressed and then bent over at the waist. Her long charcoal hair hung down, its ends touching the floor. She gathered it up in her hands and swung back up to standing. She dragged her fingers through her hair, smoothing out the ponytail as best she could, and pulled it through a red hair band. When she moved, it swung side to side across her back.

  Then she sat at her desk, where her old friend - the notebook - lay in wait. There was a black pen beside it, crying out to be held. She had a story going around in her head, a leftover from the night before. And her encounter with Aidan had filled her with a newfound conviction that she could - she would - make this story come true.

  She picked up the pen and wrote.

  It was about a woman who had once been confident and bold, but had let everything slip away when she had her heart broken by a man who never deserved her. Her life fell into disarray, until she was a fraction of the woman she had once been. She moved herself to the countryside, where her nearest neighbours were three miles away. All she wanted was to be alone, where no one would try to stop her from quietly disintegrating.

  One day, she fell down an unfinished well at the back of her long garden. She was trapped down there for days, with no companionship, no one to dispel her fears of death, and no one to tell her she would be alright. Night was the worst. It was so dark out there, with no streetlights.

  When she stared up out of the hole, all she could see were stars. They shone in a way they didn’t in the city, where she had grown up. And without the benefit of being able to see her surroundings, she developed literal tunnel vision. The black receded and soon she was swimming through the stars.

  By the third day, her fears fell away and she found she missed the dark, when the sun was up. The light was too harsh and left black spots in her vision. Now she longed for night time. She had learned to see how bright it could be, if she looked at it the right way. It made her think of the Chinese concept of yin and yang: light gave way to dark, and dark to light. You couldn’t have one without the other, and each was beautiful in its own right.

  She also grew to enjoy those long hours when she was left alone with her thoughts. She discovered things about herself she never knew were in there. Most importantly, she was more resilient than she’d realised. She hadn’t imagined she would
get through the ordeal, and yet she was doing it. She was hungry, but she was starting to forget about the pain. Her thoughts were sharpening. She pretended she was simply an ascetic, deliberately fasting.

  The next day, it rained. She leaned her head back and opened her mouth wide, savouring the water as the blessing it was.

  Then she came up with a plan. Because the well wasn’t finished, the inside was made of crumbly clay that came up under her nails if she clawed at it. The rainwater loosened it even more. She decided to dig, to make the wall of the well slope, so she could crawl her way up and out of the hole. It might take days, but she knew she could do it.

  And that was the key, that self-knowledge she had lost at some point and now reclaimed. As long as she believed, she could do anything.

  Hour after long hour, she scraped away at the wall. She slipped into her own thoughts, letting her hands work on autopilot. Two days later, she stepped aside and saw the beautiful simplicity of the angle she had made. It wasn’t much, but she thought it might be enough. So she started to crawl.

  At first, she slipped back down into the hole. But she didn’t cry. She didn’t allow herself to panic. She simply tried again. She would get through this. She had to.

  It was morning when she began her ascent. It was already dark when she finally threw her hands over the top of the well and hauled herself out. She lay on the ground panting, trying to catch her breath.

  Then she rolled onto her back and stared up at the stars she had grown to love so much. They called to her. They seemed to descend and draw her up by the hands so she was standing, even dancing. She bathed in their light - the first moment of freedom she’d felt in years.

  And she realised it hadn’t been that man who had held her back for so long, but herself. Her own mind and sense of self-loathing had been her greatest obstacles. Only when she’d been left stranded and blind had she been able to remember there was more to her than met the eye.

  She staggered into her house and sank her teeth into a browning apple, instantly feeling sick for it. When she went into the bathroom, she gasped at what she saw in the mirror above the sink. Her clothes were torn and covered in dirt. Her skin was smeared with brown dust. Her hair was a tangle of twigs and soil and leaves and who knew what else.

  But her eyes - they shone like the stars in the night sky.

  ‘That’s you,’ she told herself. Then, she amended, ‘That’s me.’

  She’d been a stranger to herself for so long, she’d forgotten how beautiful she was.

  In that instant, she knew she couldn’t mistreat that dazzling creature inside her any longer. There was something precious there in the mirror, something that needed protecting. She couldn’t sacrifice it to the memory of a man who had made her believe the woman in the mirror didn’t exist.

  And the woman’s name was Myra.