Shana Abe - The Sweetest Dark

But there were trees in oversize bronze pots: palms spreading fronds in wide, emerald fans; pomegranates and mangoes and figs, all jeweled with luscious fruit. Orchids opened fleshy petals of magenta and saffron from hanging baskets and urns. Statues stared from unexpected corners. Bamboo grew in a tended thicket, leaves sighing each time someone walked past.

A pond filled with koi and lotus plants marked the center of the jungle world, an octagon of liquid hemmed with stone. Orange and red fish, purple flowers, dark waters. A domed glass ceiling shone like a pearl overhead.

This was the castle conservatory. It was a more recent addition to Iverson, only about eighty years old, according to our teacher, Miss Swanston.

“And the light,” she said, lifting her cupped hands upward in benediction to the dome. “The light, children. We could not ask for more.”

I thought privately that we could. We could ask for a window to be opened, for instance, to release some of the heavy air that moistened every bit of my skin and stank faintly like rotting compost.

Lovely hushed music played from within the bamboo, music I knew no one else heard. Jesse was part of the jungle, as well, moving leisurely through the stalks, trimming errant stems. And if I’d had the power to ask for more of anything, really, it wouldn’t have been for an open window. It would have been for more of him. For him to come out from the thicket, so that I could see his face.

But he didn’t.

Art instruction was a combined class, meaning that two separate years of girls took it at once. There were twenty of us standing before our easels today, circling the pond. Since my class had been combined with the year ahead, one of the other nineteen students was Chloe Pemington.

She managed to ignore me magnificently. I thought Sophia might take a lesson from her. I was a gnat, a speck, an absolute nothing that required no greeting, no eye contact. Not even a sidelong sniff.

I simply did not exist, and I was standing right beside her.

I squared my shoulders and tried to do as good a job shutting out the rustling of the bamboo. Another older girl stood at my other side; I knew I existed to her, because she kept sneaking looks at my painting.

Hers, I noticed, literally dripped with color. Our assignment was to depict the lotus blossoms. Our medium was watercolor. There would be no undoing any mistakes.

“Good, good.” Miss Swanston was walking from girl to girl. “Excellent use of perspective, Sophia. Most ingenious. Fine shadow work, Florence. Perhaps a touch more … there. Yes. Beatrice. What is that? A fish? I see.”

Jesse moved nearer. Beautiful music, alluring music, sifting through green leaves.

I was listening to it despite myself, drawing languid brushstrokes along the section of my painting that was the surface of the water.

“Eleanore.”

I stepped back, glancing up at my teacher. Miss Swanston wasn’t what anyone would call fetching, but she was handsome, and far younger than most of the rest of the staff. I wanted to like her for that alone. She had hazel-gray eyes and a long nose and wide lips. In close quarters she always smelled of charcoal; I finally realized it was from the sketching pencils she carried in the pockets of her skirts.

Her head tilted; she was studying the line I’d just added. “Very nice. Very nice, indeed. You’ve captured the illusion of depth in the water quite well. Chloe,” she said, turning in place. “Do come here and have a look. Do you see what I mean?”

“I’m afraid I don’t,” said Chloe, indifferent.

“I’m referring to our previous conversation. You asked about the use of transparency for depth. Eleanore has provided us with an example of a wash of separate colors to achieve her desired effect. Notice the dark beneath the light?”

Chloe pretended to care. “I suppose.”

Jesse moved nearer still. From the corner of my eye, I glimpsed the beige of his shirt through the shoots.

“Blue under ocher, violet under green. Opposing colors that, when joined, create a perfect illusion of a shimmering whole.”

“But isn’t that only a trick, Miss Swanston?” asked Beatrice, from across the circle. “I mean, there isn’t really any special skill involved in putting two colors together, is there?”

Miss Swanston smiled. “One might argue that all of art is trickery. A landscape is not merely a representation of what one sees but also how one sees it. Using pigment and paper, Eleanore has suggested quite nicely the idea of water and of what exists beneath the water. But her vision is unique.”

“Rather,” muttered Chloe.

“As is yours,” said Miss Swanston, turning back to her. “And yours, and yours, and all of yours. That is what makes art both perfect and imperfect.”

“But a fish should look like a fish,” insisted Beatrice.

“In your world, then, yes. But to someone else, a splash of red might be a fish, and that is fine, too.”

“I hardly think splashing color about is art,” Beatrice griped, just loud enough to be heard.

“Art,” replied Miss Swanston, “may take its form however we wish. That is its joy.”

A throat was cleared behind us. We all looked; Mrs. Westcliffe stood at the doorway, a taller figure in the gloom behind her.

“And that will be all for today,” concluded Miss Swanston smoothly. “Leave your brushes and trays where they are for Mr. Holms to clean; thank you, ladies. We shall save the fish for our next lesson. Kindly place your smocks in the hamper there by the fig.”

Jesse had ventured to the edge of the bamboo, clippers in hand. He was looking at the doorway, at Mrs. Westcliffe walking toward me, Armand Louis in a dapper tweed suit at her side.

I quickly checked the rest of the circle; none of the other girls seemed in a great hurry to leave. Most of them were watching either Armand or me, folding their smocks into squares, lingering around the hamper. Whispering.

The smocks were of rough cotton and tied in the back. I yanked at the bow of mine and felt it contract into a knot.

I yanked harder, swiveling back to my easel, closing my eyes as my fingers fumbled with the cloth.

I am invisible. Invisible. If I can’t see them, they can’t see me.

Surely they weren’t here for me. Surely Armand was here to visit Chloe. She was still standing right there beside me, practically licking her lips with anticipation. She’d removed her smock already and had it arranged elegantly over one arm.

I pulled at the knot again and heard threads begin to pop.

“Allow me, Miss Jones,” said Armand, right at my back.

There was no gracious way to refuse him. Not with Mrs. Westcliffe there, too.

I exhaled and dropped my arms. I stared at the lotus petals in my painting as the new small twists and tugs of Armand’s hands rocked me back and forth.

Jesse’s music began to reverberate somewhat more sharply than before.

“There,” Armand said, soft near my ear. “Nearly got it.”

“Most kind of you, my lord.” Mrs. Westcliffe’s voice was far more carrying. “Do you not agree, Miss Jones?”

Her tone said I’d better.

“Most kind,” I repeated. For some reason I felt him as a solid warmth behind me, behind all of me, even though only his knuckles made a gentle bumping against my spine.

How blasted long could it take to unravel a knot?

“Yes,” said Chloe unexpectedly. “Lord Armand is always a perfect gentleman, no matter who or what demands his attention.”

“There,” the gentleman said, and at last his hands fell away. The front of the smock sagged loose. I shrugged out of it as fast as I could, wadding it up into a ball.

“Excuse me.” I ducked a curtsy and began my escape to the hamper, but Mrs. Westcliffe cut me short.

“A moment, Miss Jones. We require your presence.”

I turned to face them. Armand was smiling his faint, cool smile. Mrs. Westcliffe looked as if she wished to fix me in some way. I raised a hand instinctively to my hair, trying to press it properly into place.

“You have the honor of being invited to tea at the manor house,” the headmistress said. “To formally meet His Grace.”

“Oh,” I said. “How marvelous.”

I’d rather have a tooth pulled out.

“Indeed. Lord Armand came himself to deliver the invitation.”

“Least I could I do,” said Armand. “It wasn’t far. This Saturday, if that’s all right.”

“Um …”

“I am certain Miss Jones will be pleased to cancel any other plans,” said Mrs. Westcliffe.

“This Saturday?” Unlike me, Chloe had not conceded an inch of ground. “Why, Mandy! That’s the day you promised we’d play lawn tennis.”

He cocked a brow at her, and I knew right then that she was lying and that she knew that he knew. She sent him a melting smile.

“Isn’t it, my lord?”

“I must have forgotten,” he said. “Well, but we cannot disappoint the duke, can we?”

“No, indeed,” interjected Mrs. Westcliffe.

“So I suppose you’ll have to come along to the tea instead, Chloe.”

“Very well. If you insist.”

He didn’t insist. He did, however, sweep her a very deep bow and then another to the headmistress. “And you, too, Mrs. Westcliffe. Naturally. The duke always remarks upon your excellent company.”

“Most kind,” she said again, and actually blushed.

Armand looked dead at me. There was that challenge behind his gaze, that one I’d first glimpsed at the train station.

“We find ourselves in harmony, then. I shall see you in a few days, Miss Jones.”

I tightened my fingers into the wad of the smock and forced my lips into an upward curve. He smiled back at me, that cold smile that said plainly he wasn’t duped for a moment.

I did not get a bow.

...

Jesse was at the hamper when I went to toss in the smock. Before I could, he took it from me, eyes cast downward, no words. Our fingers brushed beneath the cloth.

That fleeting glide of his skin against mine. The sensation of hardened calluses stroking me, tender and rough at once. The sweet, strong pleasure that spiked through me, brief as it was.

That had been on purpose. I was sure of it.

I was dreaming. It was a good dream, one I’d had nearly every night since coming to Iverson, and I liked it.

In my dream I was heavy at first, heavy as one of the massive rocks that made their rough stair steps down the cliffs of the island to the sea. I felt the weight of me sinking into the earth, and it was as if I would sink forevermore.

But then I changed. I became buoyant—immediately, fantastically buoyant, without any weight at all. I rose in a mist, in smoke, silvery curls that shone translucent in the moonlight, rising, rising. Free to flow beyond windows and walls. Free to descend into the unknown depths of a very dark woods.

I was flight. The air pushed by an owl’s wings, the breeze off the sea that ruffled bracken and oak leaves. I could go anywhere, high or low or as far as I wished, but what I wished was to float through the open door of a cottage nestled in those woods, a place that was also dark. Also unknown.

In the cottage was a bed, and in the bed was Jesse.

His eyes were closed; his lips were parted. I sank closer to him, to the heated contours of his uncovered skin, his chest, his shoulders, up to his peaceful face. I touched him, and his hands lifted to touch me back. He inhaled deep and I became the oxygen that nourished him. I was inside him. I was outside him. My lips were on his and our kiss pulled me back into weight, but not as a stone.

As me. As Lora with Jesse in his bed.

Our arms locked, our bodies pressed into one. His hair a golden sift against my throat, his unshaven cheek on mine, deliciously, wonderfully rough. The sheets knotted around us. Our kisses. His tongue. His hands stroking my back and arms and down, following the curves of me, cupping me, cradling.

I was empty and full at once. I was the opening flower, the ripe berry ready to burst. I wanted more of him and could not get more; we were already so close our bodies slipped slick together.

Beloved, murmured the voice that lived inside me, tender as I’d never heard it before. I’ve missed you. I’ve waited so long.

His eyes opened and he smiled at me: a green summer storm, a shadowed eternity there in his gaze.

You already know that I love you, Jesse said, and in that instant I awoke.