Dark and Deepest Red

by Anna-Marie McLemore

  They emerged from linen cabinets and coat closets. They showed up in dining rooms, and slender women who’d sworn off bread years ago ate slices of black forest cake like they were drinking in a new perfume. When red shoes appeared at the senior community out by the pear orchard, eighty-year-olds who’d once been high school sweethearts ran off together.

  Aubrey Wyeth, famous for being afraid to drive, found a brick-red pair once belonging to her older sister, in the middle of the street. The neighbors all saw her get into her mother’s four door and speed away from that cluster of houses, identical and neat as folded shirts.

  Sylvie Everley found a pair resting on her bed, soles down on her great-grandmother’s patchwork quilt. The color of the satin, just between red and burgundy, was the near-purple of her mother’s favorite wine. The beading made her think of how the light from the dining room chandelier reflected in a glass. The next morning she took a second look at a flush-cheeked boy she sometimes partnered with on the debate team. He’d been trying for weeks to work up the nerve to talk to her. That afternoon they were kissing behind the library.

  For all the rumors that Oliva shoes brought grace and luck, it had always been our red ones that carried the spark of secret kisses, of brazen hearts, of eating bread with more butter than flour. And this year, all my friends were wearing them. Their red shoes crunched over the leaf mulch, flashing with the bright magic that had taken hold of them all.

  All of them, except me.

  I was an Oliva. My family had made all these red shoes, and somehow I was the only one of my friends not wearing them. I had learned to blow-dry my hair straight (sometimes just so Sylvie could curl it again), put on eyeliner in the side mirror of Graham’s car (pencil only; I was still working on liquid), eat lemon slices dusted with packets of artificial sweetener (the only thing Piper ever ate before a dance). All the things that made me almost, almost the same kind of girl as Piper Tamsin and Sylvie Everley.

  And this would be the thing to remind them that I was nothing like them. It would call attention to my brown skin and brown-black hair. It would remind them that whenever I bought something new, I wore it twice the first week, while they all had so many tags-on things in their closets that they forgot about them.

  This would be what set me aside from them, that a pair of red shoes enchanted with this year’s glimmer had yet to appear on my windowsill or by my bed.

  But when I got home from getting the crunchy, fluffy ice my mother and I loved, pieces of beaded red satin and velvet lay on the floor of my room.

  Without bending for a closer look, I recognized them.

  The cut-up scraps I’d saved eleven years ago. The last I had of my grandparents’ work, both of them dying within months of each other when I was seven.

  I let out a breathless laugh, both at the memory and the beauty of the stitching.

  For eleven years, I had kept them in the back of my closet, wrapped in mushroom-colored tissue paper, and now they had swept out like a whirl of bright leaves. It felt like both a blessing from my abuelo and a pointed remark from my abuela.

  This was how I could honor the beautiful pair of shoes my grandmother had cut into confetti.

  I had learned since that night that if I never wanted families like the Tamsins or the Everleys to make me give up a piece of myself I had made by hand, the best way was to become like their daughters. I had done it for years, and I would do it again. Like their daughters, I would wear red shoes this fall.

  But I would do it the way my abuelo and abuela would have wanted.

  I had grown up among leather awls and dyed thread. At three, I played with empty wooden spools instead of blocks. At eight, I knew how to measure a shoe’s side seam, and at ten, how to run a drawstring through a slipper’s casing without bunching it.

  I picked up the scraps of beaded cloth.

  I was an Oliva. If I wanted the kind of shoes my friends were wearing—shoes that might spark love, or inspire the making of midnight polvorones—of course I would have to sew them myself.

  Strasbourg, 1518

  “Try it for yourself.” Melisende holds out a dish of pale yellow coins. Small rounds of butter.

  Lala stares at the dish. She has never seen anyone eat butter on its own, not even the wealthiest Strasbourgeois. Is this a test, to see if she will do it? Will they laugh if she places one on her tongue?

  Being liked by these girls has shielded Lala from Strasbourg’s inquiring glances. But it comes at the cost of them thinking her strange and intriguing, with her rough palms, her confusion about delicate manners, and the fantastic rumors Tante has started to explain their brown skin.

  She looks to Enneleyn, the first of the burgher’s daughters who ever offered her friendship, and the one whose lead Lala follows whenever she is unsure.

  All Enneleyn says is, “You must be joking.”

  “It works,” Agnesona insists, taking one and rubbing it into her cheek.

  Then Lala understands.

  There is no end to Melisende and Agnesona’s schemes to render their hair more gleaming, their complexions more luminous, their forms more radiant. Two girls, considered the most beautiful in the city except Enneleyn, and they work without rest for it. Last week they dabbed on brimstone ground with oil of turpentine for red spots.

  Their limbs are delicate as carved alabaster, their fingers slender and uncalloused. It is the look of having been raised within the city walls, in the wealthier quarters. They let the sun on their faces so little they must pinch their cheeks for the slightest blush. If not for the brilliant red of their curls, the sisters would seem almost colorless, while Enneleyn, with her cloth-of-gold hair, has lips as pink as stained glass.

  It took months for Lala to learn not to stare at Enneleyn, trying to guess how she might become such a girl, so adored it would make her and Tante a little safer.

  Melisende turns her face toward the window. The grease gleams on her cheekbone. “Look.”

  Lala would sooner pocket a coin of butter than smear it onto her skin.

  “Has she shown you the one she will not even share with me?” Agnesona snatches a jar from a low table.

  “Give that back!” Melisende shouts.

  But Enneleyn has already taken the jar, filled with a deep amber liquid that holds a point of light at its center.

  Enneleyn lifts the jar. “What is it?”

  “It’s birch sap.” Melisende tries to snatch it back.

  Enneleyn holds it out of reach.

  “With a pearl in it,” Agnesona says, laughing. “See how the sap is dissolving it.”

  “Lavinia, look.” Enneleyn tilts the jar toward Lala, showing how the sap eats at the creamy sheen.

  These girls, with their Veronese raisins to brighten their complexions, the Tuscan oil they comb through their hair, their dust-rose gowns for Carnival. These girls from whom Lala hides her hands so they will not see the stains and calluses wrought by work. These girls, who only showed interest in Lala when rumors Tante started took hold. Tante planted the bulb, the first whispers that she and Lala were the cast-off issue of Italian noblemen. And it bloomed, quietly explaining the brown of their skin. It flowered so well that no one remembers that Tante herself started it.

  It has had the unexpected advantage of making Lala interesting to girls such as Melisende and Agnesona. They would never bother with her otherwise, no more than they would bother with Geruscha and Henne.

  They would also never guess that Lala now keeps the secret of a missing woman.

  As Agnesona slips the jar from Enneleyn’s hands, Lala’s stomach pinches hard as a knot in thread.

  She and Alifair saw Delphine in the fields outside the city, and have said nothing.

  Because Lala insisted they say nothing.

  And now Alifair’s guilt kicks at him. She can hear it at night, in the creaking of his bed, how he turns over and cannot sleep.

  Her thoughts begin to spin, wondering over the safest place to confess. Perhaps the priest at Sain
t-Pierre-le-Vieux, the one who doesn’t fleece his flock for all they can tithe.

  “Give it!” Melisende grabs at the jar again.

  “So, Lavinia.” Agnesona gives the overdone air of pretending not to notice her sister. “How is your changeling? High summer must be his favorite time of year.”

  Lala swallows a sigh. “Don’t call him that.”

  “Come now.” Agnesona lifts a suggestive eyebrow. “If I were the love of a fairy prince, I’d tell everyone.”

  Her tone is more mocking than whimsical, especially on the word prince.

  “Not this again,” Enneleyn says.

  “What?” Agnesona asks. “No one knows where he came from, and he’s prettier than the other boys.”

  Lala’s stomach buckles, wondering if prettier means Agnesona suspects he was proclaimed a girl at birth.

  “Sounds like a forest nixie, if you ask me.” Agnesona quirks her lips.

  “Are you so desperate for gossip that you must dredge these shallows?” Enneleyn grabs the jar and hands it back to Melisende, settling the dispute with the quiet authority of an older sister.

  A scream rises up from the lane. It slices through the bustle, quieting the shopkeepers who call out to customers.

  Before Lala can even move, she imagines the scene.

  Delphine, barely alive, running home with the wounds of wolves’ teeth spilling blood from her limbs.

  Enneleyn throws the shutters wider.

  The four of them crowd at the window.

  A young woman—Isentrud, Lala recalls her name—kneels at her doorstep, recoiling from a mass of blood and flesh staining the cobble.

  “What…” It is the only word Lala can produce before trailing off.

  “A sheep’s afterbirth,” Enneleyn says, almost mournfully.

  “They’ve left it at her father’s door to shame her,” Agnesona says, less mournfully.

  Lala turns away before the sight of it lifts the acid from her stomach.

  “Now everyone will know she’s lain with Guarin,” Melisende says.

  “As though everyone didn’t know that,” Agnesona says.

  Enneleyn rounds on them both. “Can’t you two think of anything better to do with your mincing mouths than make an awful thing worse?”

  She storms from the room, the windows gilding her hair and gown.

  The sisters lower their eyes.

  Lala watches the corner of Enneleyn’s skirt vanish.

  If her lips were still before, now they feel sealed in place. The blood, the wailing woman, it is all a reminder of what Lala had almost forgotten.

  In Strasbourg, the only way to survive your own crimes is for no one to know of them.

  Emil

  Other towns scheduled school breaks around national holidays. In Briar Meadow, school let out for a few days in the middle of fall.

  Years ago, according to Emil’s mother, it was supposed to be a time for children to help their parents sweep the strange magic out of their houses. They helped get the halos of dandelion fluff wind-borne, to point the out-of-season birds south, to wash the dresses that slipped out of closets and ended up in the mud, like they were making their own snow angels.

  And maybe it was true, fifty years ago. Now the only sign of all that was friends dragging friends outside on the first freezing night of the season.

  “Let’s just go see it,” Luke had said.

  “Big deal,” Aidan had said. “It happens every year.”

  “You must be a real joy to be around during the holidays.”

  Emil never thought much about the glimmer over the reservoir. Sure, it looked a little like a Milky Way, small and bright and low, a cirrus cloud made of cosmic dust. But it would be there all week. He’d see it from a distance every time he went anywhere at night, at least until it dimmed and faded.

  But raising any objection to Luke’s and Eddie’s enthusiasm wasn’t worth the effort. Path of least resistance, like current through a circuit. So Emil had thrown on his jacket and gone out to the reservoir.

  Where his friends proceeded to ignore the sweep of light below the clouds and talk about the physics of a drop experiment.

  “It won’t reduce the impulse enough,” Eddie said.

  “Like you have a better idea,” Luke said.

  “Actually, I do.” Eddie unfurled a blueprint from his back pocket.

  “That”—Aidan slapped at the paper—“will break if you breathe on it wrong.”

  “Why, exactly, did we come all the way out here to do this?” Emil asked.

  “Hey, Woodlock,” Aidan said, “tell them I’m right.”

  “Oh no.” Emil backed up, showing them his palms. “I’m not taking sides here. I learned my lesson with the magnetic fields.”

  “Wise choice,” said a girl’s voice, one he placed just as he turned toward it.

  “When Sylvie and Aubrey get into it about skirt length, I stay half a mile away,” Rosella said.

  With rising dread, Emil realized his friends had quieted.

  They were all staring at her.

  “Sorry,” Rosella said. “Am I taking him away from whatever great scientific breakthrough you all are working toward?”

  They all shook their heads slightly, snapping back to the moment. It was so similar that despite the far range in their coloring and build, it made them look like brothers.

  “Not at all,” Eddie said.

  “Get out of here, Woodlock,” Luke said.

  “Yeah, we don’t need you,” Aidan said.

  Emil tried not to cringe, at least not visibly enough that Rosella would see it. His friends may have meant well, shoving him in the direction of a girl they knew he’d liked for years. But if lack of subtlety was a recognized art, they’d all have museum exhibits in their honor.

  “Sorry if I scared you earlier,” Rosella said, walking a few steps from the fallen tree his friends had spread the blueprint over.

  He went with her. “You didn’t.”

  Rosella tripped over a rock or a root.

  Emil caught her forearm. “You okay?”

  Her hand stayed on him.

  The back of his neck went hot. She seemed nervous now, when she hadn’t earlier. Instead of making him less nervous, that somehow made it worse, like how jumpy he felt was rubbing off.

  A few trees away, two silhouettes leapt from the dark.

  Rosella’s hand drew back from Emil and flew to her sweater.

  Emil couldn’t quite place the laughter, but the sound of it was familiar, boys he’d heard laughing behind him in class, boys who considered scaring girls the best way to impress them.

  Piper Tamsin and Graham Davies pitched themselves into the dark, sending up twin choruses of, “Chris, you ass! Get back here!”

  The boys fled, their laughter ringing through the night.

  “Yeah, you better run,” Piper yelled after them, and the sound echoed off the clouds.

  Emil watched them. “My money’s on Piper and Graham.”

  “It should be,” Rosella said. “Don’t be fooled by the manicures.”

  She buttoned the last buttons on her coat and studied the glimmer reflected in the water. It looked silver and shiny as mercury or antimony.

  “Why did we stop swimming out here?” she asked.

  “You mean other than our fathers’ identical safety lectures?” He put on his best Julien Woodlock voice. “‘Do you know how cold the water gets down there?’” he quoted.

  “‘Worse for every foot you go down,’” Rosella jumped in with her closest mimic to her own father.

  Emil laughed.

  “Seriously, did they rehearse those?” Rosella asked. “It was like they were reading off a script.”

  Emil and Rosella had stopped going to the reservoir years ago, and it was hard to know if that was part of what had led to them not being friends anymore, or if it was something lost to the fact that they weren’t friends anymore. They had never stopped greeting each other in the halls, or inserting dragon and
unicorn stuffed animals among the nativity display at church (they had yet to be caught). But the relentless teasing of classmates who singsonged that they were boyfriend and girlfriend had worn them down a little more each year. And realizing how much he liked her—liked her, in that way his classmates taunted them both about—had made him less inclined to hold on to her, not more. It was half not wanting them to be right, and half not wanting to find out if it was one-sided.

  This whole time, Emil had thought he’d need some kind of nerve, flinty and unhesitating, to talk to Rosella for more than a few sentences. But now it seemed like all it took was falling back into the memory of being nine or ten together, knifing their bodies into the freezing reservoir.

  Rosella stopped at a high point on the rocks. Far voices rose off the scattered knots of people they knew, mixing with the smell of cheap beer and cigarettes and the sugary mint gum meant to cover both.

  She stared at the ribbon of light above the reservoir. It wavered and flickered, like stars reflected in a still pond. Both the clouds above and the water below mirrored it.

  “I never really thought of you as someone who came out for this,” she said.

  He shrugged, looking where she looked. “I’m not.”

  He felt the slow turn of her face toward his, like the clouds unveiling the moon.

  “Emil?” she said.

  “Yeah?” he said, wondering what question she was holding in her mouth.

  Being this close to her brought him back to the chill of the water on their skin years ago, the light cutting down through the depth, how it felt like the darkness underneath them was infinite. And how that was both terrifying and thrilling.

  The way she stared at him now made him wonder if she was there with him, in the reservoir in July, the thick blanket of dark water letting them pretend that any way they touched was accidental.

  The air felt sharp enough to grow frost flowers. And something about the glimmer above them turned his overthinking brain off just enough.

  Emil slid his hand onto the back of her neck, a gesture small enough that it could have been the start of anything. He would wait, stay still, until she told him what.