“Make a wish.”
The only thing she’d ever wished for was right in front of her. She tried to blow out the flame, but no amount of effort worked. She pouted. “Is that why you’re grinning at me like that?”
“I wasn’t quite sure what would happen. I’m thinking you probably have to use your head.”
“Right. I’ll smash the flame with my forehead. Happy death day to me.”
The corner of his lips curled. “That’s not what I meant.”
She flicked her gaze to the flame and thought about it extinguishing. It disappeared in a flash, rising into a ribbon of winding smoke, twisting its way toward the very object of her wish.
“Bravo.”
The only thing she wanted was for him to always look at her in such a way. A combination of intrigue and humor with a dash of adoration.
“You got me a gift?”
“Nothing crazy,” he warned. “It isn’t much.”
She lifted the lid of the box, and the paper curled like the petals of a blooming flower to reveal a mask framed in white, fluffy feathers. The glass glistened like black ice, and long silver eyelashes stretched at least a foot high. Her attention gravitated to a jagged crack. The imperfection was no mistake; it zigzagged deliberately from left eyebrow to right chin.
“It’s beautiful.”
“You like it?”
“I might never take it off.”
“Let’s not get carried away.” Chase clasped his hand around hers, bringing her to her feet. He lifted the mask from the box and fastened it around her head.
She bent to gather her things, and when she rose again, Chase’s face was hidden behind porcelain. The black lips of the mask curled into a fitting smirk, and there were wise crow’s feet painted around the outer edges. Attached to the top was a lopsided fedora. Even though it covered most of his face, the white of the mask and the markings around the eyes accentuated the brilliant blue shining behind them. Chase always looked good in costume. He looked good in anything.
One year for Halloween, Alex had her fragile heart set on Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. It was the same year she became a regular at the hospital, and Danya struck a deal with her in August. If Alex remained injury-free for two months, she had free reign to select the boys’ costumes. It was the ultimate prize. Somehow, she managed it, eight weeks with no dislocations or breaks and barely any bruises … even after Jonas attempted to shove her off the monkey bars in a last-ditch effort to save his hide. Because of his interference, Alex forced him to dress up as the wicked witch. Even through the dark green paint, everyone could see his blush of embarrassment. Kaleb picked the Tin Man, Gabe picked the lion, and Chase was the scarecrow. It was her favorite Halloween.
On the day she died—exactly a year ago—she felt very much like becoming Dorothy again. When she left Miss Petra’s classroom and stepped into her new world, it was like watching the movie switching from black and white to vibrant colors. She never thought she would ever again see something as fascinating as those colors upon first sight. She was wrong. They changed every day. They brightened, shifted, and sometimes bled into one another.
Now, a year after her death, weaving through the crowds of the Autumn Mask, she realized how weak her eyes had been even then. She could see merriment suspended above the dancing crowd in the form of a bubble; it hung like nostalgia, pulsing in the energy that fed it. Lazuli Street was ramose, something that had taken her months to realize. It was only the trunk to the other roads that branched off of it, roads that had been invisible to her until she was looking for them. Tonight, from those interconnected streets she could tell from a mile away which music was playing where. The classical pieces rose into the night as physical notes, tranquilly taking their time. The jazzy music shot bursts of jovial, energetic orange lightning. The jumpy dance music shook the stars overhead. Some notes were hyper enough to jump and others drooped with sadness; it depended on the piece.
Last year it frightened her. The people, the chaos, and the masks. The simple and beautiful, feathery and light costumes were swallowed by the darkness of the skulls, the flames, and the distortion. Alex remembered clinging to Jonas because he was something familiar in this hallucinatory setting. The vendors lined the streets eagerly promoting inventions, games, and refreshments. Josepha and Johanna twirled in hoop skirts outside their fashion agency. They yelled in French and passed out mouthfuls of wavy-looking steam cake. Across the street at the stairway to the Lazuli gardens, the florist stood on the steps lifting flowers into the air like lanterns. The flower shop itself was even in costume, wearing a pouty mask and a crooked hat on its angled roof.
The Ex distributors offered steaming cups of vapory emotion, and spirits sipped or inhaled. Comfort tasted like coffee, insight like honeysuckle, and energy like wine. Dancers, gamers, and storytellers intermixed with the partygoers.
She hadn’t been ready to see certain aspects of the world then, and she suspected she still wasn’t ready for the reality of the things her mind prevented her from seeing now. Through wigs of dancing ribbons and wings of spider webs, spirits clutched strings in their hands, attached to clouds suspended above their heads. Some of the clouds released rain, others released sunlight. Some of the walkways and stairways led to tableaus or light shows. Spirits ogled at the art or added their own touches; some rearranged their own features and limbs to make themselves the art. Hair grew from shoulders, arms became legs, and fingers stretched like yardsticks. A girl with pillar candles dripping wax down her face and shoulders spread red on an invisible canvas. Her art stuck to the night. Alex and Chase found Kaleb and Gabe standing in a crooked doorway, painting extra hands to a shattered clock.
Alex wrapped herself around Chase’s arm and used her free hand to reach out for the bubbles of colorful energy floating over them. Each time she popped one, it released emotion. Her favorites were the yellow ones that drenched her in happy sunlight.
Kaleb managed to balance the bubbles on his fingers, taming them like butterflies. He’d offer them to the girls they passed, who giggled or kissed him in return.
They reached Gramble Street where the center of travel, Gramble Station, was dressed like a harlequin. A black and white checked skirt fluffed at the base of the building and the giant red mask around it had a beauty mark at the lip. A motorcycle raceway originated outside of Gramble and twisted around the walls of the city and through the trees, which were dressed like the night sky, twinkling with millions of lights. The Lasalles spent half the night trying their hands at beating the course without crashing, but they had no success. They returned their bikes in shambles.
The costumes intensified as the night wore on. Some spirits were aflame. A singing girl holding a raining cloud stood beside one torched spirit to put out the fire. Next to her, a girl somberly sang from underneath a cage of wires. The creepiest faces lacked costumes. Like smeared artwork, distorted light or misshapen features, they danced about in the kaleidoscope of a crowd.
Alex tensed when they reached the area for storytellers and aura readers. Last year, Jonas told her not to trust them, not to even travel into this section of the festival, but Kaleb wasn’t afraid of anything and needed to be a part of everything. He had Pax Simone slung over his shoulder, and Little followed behind them, hanging off Kaleb’s trail of energy, even though Linton Darwin was desperately trying to get her attention. Skye rolled her eyes and scooted away from them.
One deep-voiced storyteller wore a gorgeous headdress of a half-moon in sparkling gold. His nose and lips were made of stars, and constellations rotated around him. He was talking about the haunting of the Sallie House in Kansas, and Gabe perked up, leading their group to a vacant area to the left of the moon man. There, sandwiched in between so many mesmerized spirits, Alex felt comfortable because she was hidden behind a mask.
The next story began, entitled: Paradise. Alex gasped, and Chase reached out to snatch the blue mist, to catch the breath of surprise before the storyt
eller saw it.
“My stories,” he began in a worn out voice, “they come to me in pieces, battered and torn, so sometimes they do not mend cleanly. One story may be comprised from ten different spirits over the course of a lifetime before finally fitting into place. This one took the longest to assemble because the pieces were so delicate.
“Some souls are larger than life, and their spirits are visible even while trapped in a body. Many of you sitting here were probably described in such a way. Spirited. Special. These are the people who become stories, the legends.
“Long ago, a man and his wife created three such spirits in three consecutive years. The children ran rampant through the town, aging their parents with their antics. Sneaky and wild but harmless in their fun.”
Alex smiled. Sneaky and wild but harmless. They sounded like her friends.
“Their parents were doctors and gone often, making the three Cinatri children dependent upon one another. Brigitta, the oldest, took care of her siblings and tended to the house. Broderick, the only brother, taught the girls to fight. Balin, the youngest, she taught them how to love. When illness plagued the town and claimed Broderick and Brigitta, they passed into the afterlife with ease. Balin felt lost without her brother and sister. She mourned them endlessly and ignored the power in her mind until one day her sadness turned to rage, and she inadvertently ignited the home. Her parents feared her ‘gift,’ but more so they feared her punishment. They lived in a time when such talents were called witchcraft and were punishable by death. Thus, they used the fire to script her death and kept her hidden in the cellar.”
Pity struck Alex’s heart. She remembered how she felt after the Lasalles died. She mourned and she cried, but more than anything she was furious, enough to even set a house on fire if her mind was gifted enough to do so. Instead, she took out her rage on herself, but like Balin’s parents, her father sent her away. Not under the ground in a cellar but close enough.
“On the day her spirited brother and sister came to her again, Balin was so used to darkness that she distrusted the light. Brigitta told her they were building a city for others like them. They called it Eidolon, a name that meant phantom but also an ideal. It would be their ideal world. They said Balin could come along, but Balin couldn’t travel as they could, and she couldn’t leave the darkness to which she’d become accustomed.
“Brigitta Cinatri, unwilling to allow her baby sister to rot away for however long her mind would last, traveled to Salem, Massachusetts, where she’d heard rumors of similar ‘gifts.’ To avoid the perils and persecution of ‘witchcraft,’ she encouraged the gifted to migrate west where they could build a town under the ground. A paradise of safety would give Balin a life again. Safe in the darkness, it would create a life for her sister. And so it was. But Balin missed her siblings. One day, she battled her fears and ventured up into the light and traveled to the town her sister and brother had built. But she couldn’t get in. Her body prevented it. As did the town.”
Alex felt a strong sensation of déjà vu. She pictured someone trying to get through the gates of Eidolon, but her mind kept inserting Skye and Rae and the gray Forget-me tree with the peeling bark.
“Brigitta begged for them to let in their sister, but Broderick refused. He was the voice of his people. The town had unanimously opposed offering sanctuary to the bodied, and that included the gifted. The hidden town of gifted souls cried foul, tired of living under the ground, they claimed that they had been promised safety if so desired. They chose violence. Lives were lost with no resolution, and the Cinatris put up even more walls around our city. At the end of the pointless fighting the world was no different, but never the same. The gifted attacked spirits and the spirits imprisoned the gifted. Balin Cinatri retreated to the darkness of Paradise where she eventually died. They could have reunited after the Cinatris passed on from this afterworld. But that is a piece of the story I’ve never found.”
When he finished, his audience didn’t stir. If they were anything like Alex, they were hoping he might keep going or begin a new story. Instead, he stood, with the planets revolving around his head. When he left, the stars left traces behind like contrails after a plane. Similarly, his voice lingered and hummed in his wake.
Alex continued to think of the story as she and Chase explored the rest of the festival. Spirits tossed around bulbs of light like balloons. The golden flashes stretched to the sky only to plummet again to the crowd below, unable to reach the stars they resembled. When one of them landed in Chase’s arms, the light from the bulb illuminated his face and his icy blue eyes. He used two hands to push the bulb high into the outstretched arms of the spirits reaching over the rails of the balconies.
It never occurred to Alex that Brigitta Cinatri was a real person with real problems. She was someone who created a beautifully macabre world—in part for her sister—but failed in her ultimate goal. The story didn’t explain how Paradise became a prison.
Chase took a seat on the grassy hill, watching his brothers sprint down to the playing fields. “What are you thinking about?”
Alex watched him pat the ground and sat down next to him. The earth was cold, and she felt tired and sluggish. “Did you ever notice that the ground in Parrish was always warm?”
“No.”
“I never thought of that before.”
“You might notice it now because cold air sucks the life out of us.”
“Hm.” She sat for several minutes, plucking grass from the ground and tying it together into knots. “I don’t get how we’re supposed to be so much smarter than everyone else, but we can’t figure out a way to coexist.”
“Are you talking about that story? If you think about it, really think about it, it’s probably better this way. I mean, can you imagine what the physical world would do if they knew ghosts existed? Half of them would be frightened out of their minds. And the other half, the ones who would choose to acknowledge us, would figure out how much we know. Even the smartest of the bodied would suddenly be inferior. It would be like aliens taking over the world. People aren’t ready for us. They wouldn’t understand. They would hate us.”
“What about Moribund?”
“A town of a whopping fifty people is much easier to control.”
A blade of grass snapped as Alex tried to stretch it too far. “So you think it’s the right decision?” She plucked a dandelion from the ground and began to wrap the blades of grass around the strong stem. It needed something different to keep it from breaking. “Keeping the gifted away?”
“I guess I see the benefits of both. I can’t imagine being alive and knowing about all of this.”
That meant Ellington was right. People weren’t ready for things until they discovered it for themselves.
“People would go out of their minds.”
Out of their minds. The thought twisted itself around in her head until it formed a wonderful idea. Out of her mind. She could leave her mind.
Why hadn’t she thought of that before?
***
Banyan taught them that meditation was a manner of consciousness. In other words, Alex needed to let her brain leave reality but guide it in the right direction. After the festival, she pulled one of Rae’s drawings from the wall, a pathway under a canopy of trees. It was damp to the touch. Alex knew the dirt path well and recognized the smell of earth and childhood. It had been so often imprinted with the footprints of five children, Alex being one of them. They never feared this northern area of the Parrish woods so close to Liv’s grandmother. It was far away from the tormented cove and far away from the ghosts of the Eskers.
Rae had to be pulling scenes from Alex’s dreams. She’d drawn the scene on the beach where Alex and Chase walked hand in hand by the light of the moon and the bonfire, except in the picture, she’d inserted herself sitting among the dunes. She hugged her knees and lifted her chin to watch them through the beach grass. Since the sketches depicted Parrish, Alex hoped they would help her
. She crisscrossed her legs and tried to relax her shoulders, concentrating on the drawing of the pathway so intensely that her vision blurred.
“Alex!” Chase’s voice sliced her concentration.
She put a hand over her heart. “You scared me.”
“Sorry,” Chase said. “I brought you Happy Death Day cake.”
“Yeah, right.”
“I’m serious.” He held out a box. “Josepha and Johanna are always eating it. They gave it to me.”
She hid the sketch behind her back. “You’re kidding, right?”
Chase chuckled. “I can’t image it tastes much more solid than Ex since we’re dead and all, but it’s the thought that counts.”
“Is this the stuff you breathe in?”
“I used to watch you devour your cupcakes every birthday. You’ve always inhaled chocolate, so what’s the difference?”
She reached out a hand to push his shoulder, but he caught that hand and didn’t let go. He used his free hand to trace the enjoyment forming on her lips, but when he reached around to touch her back, he grasped the sketch.
He yanked it from behind her. “What’s this? Is that Parrish?”
“I think so.”
With a dumbfounded expression, Chase sat. “Look. You can even see our tree.” The “treasure tree,” as they called it, was engraved with each of their initials. In the sketch, it was small because of the distance, but it was there.
“If you try, you can feel the edges of our names.”
“And why were you sitting with your nose in front of it when I walked in?”
“I’m trying to channel my inner Banyan Philo.”
“You’re meditating?”
She grimaced. “I’m trying. It’s not working very well.”
“Why?”
“I’ve never done it before.”
“No.” He laughed. “Why are you trying to meditate? And why are you using a drawing?”
Of Delicate Pieces Page 14
