Chapter 16
You say gemstones aren’t your thing anymore, but maybe this still is? Seb told me you’d like it, blame him if you don’t. Sorry for how harsh I was the other night.
yours, Ry
Yours.
Maru had woken up earlier than she usually would that morning. In fact she hadn’t slept much at all. Since the incident with Penny and Sam she found herself restless, unable to focus on anything, even sleep. Thinking maybe cold morning air would help, she’d opened her door to outside. Waiting for her was an insulated container with this note tapped to the top.
She’d stared at it a good while before picking it up and bringing it into her room. Opening the container she was met with the delicious aroma of still warm rhubarb pie. Still a favourite, Seb hadn’t been wrong.
Where had the farmer gotten rhubarb at this time of year? Why had she gone to the effort of making Maru an entire pie?
She holds the note in her hands, just looking at it. Reading it and rereading it, wondering if some other message will reveal itself. A part of her feels hotly embarrassed, wants to toss the pie into the woods and light the note on fire. Ry shouldn’t be apologizing. She shouldn’t be asking about what she likes from her brother. She shouldn’t be reminding her of that night. The fact that it’s her favourite pie somehow makes her feel even more angry.
The looming shame of that night had subsided only due to the surprising evening with Penny, but it was still there. Lurking.
She takes a deep breath. Obviously it was still lurking in Ry’s mind too. Otherwise she wouldn’t have done this.
Maru bites her lip, thinking, before she folds the note and slips it into her pocket. She can examine it further later. She takes the pie to the kitchen.
“I didn’t realize you were baking.” Her mom says, coming into the kitchen to refill her coffee.
“I didn’t. Ry made it.” Maru cuts it into eight equal pieces.
Her mom pauses in her pouring, “Ry?”
It takes a lot for Maru not to wince, she can say the fact of it easily, but if her mom starts asking for nuance...
She shrugs, carefully removing a piece onto her plate and hoping this conversation won’t go further.
“She’s always so generous.” Her mom muses.
“Do you want some?” She wonders if Ry had intended her to share it, what she’d been intending at all? She lifts the first forkful to her mouth.
“Oh, I don’t know. There’s still some corn blobfish risotto left.”
Maru’s fork stops before reaching her mouth at the comment, she scowls at her mother who laughs guiltily.
“I’m sorry, you enjoy. I might try a slice after lunch.” And she heads out of the room, back to work.
Maru closes her eyes and gives her taste buds full attention. She is not disappointed.
“Abbi, Abbi!” He yells, pulling the carton of cigarettes from her hands and lifting it out of her reach, “you know these things will kill ya!”
Despite everything, despite time, she laughs like he was always able to make her do. She shoves him hard, put playfully. Sam exaggeratedly stumbles, then bounces back and locks her in a headlock. Seb feels a pang of something that might be nostalgia.
After they finish tussling, Sam slams his last bag into the trunk of his fashionable shit box of a car. He’s leaving the day before Spirits Eve. It felt like they should remark on this. It felt like he should at least be able to give them this holiday, even if none of them want it. Nobody says anything.
"My two best friends.” Sam says, beaming at them, and Sebastian can tell from the look on his face he really thinks that’s what they are. That the past remains crisp and pure, untainted by more recent events. Untainted by reality.
He pulls them with either arm into a brief hug. Abbi has to hold her cigarette smoke in her lungs until he releases them, then blows it sideways.
“Hope to see you both in the city soon!” Sam gets in the front seat and drives off, waving, smiling.
Sebastian can’t tell if this feels like the first time Sam left them, or if that’s only because they all wished it did.
They stand there silently until he’s driven off.
“Cheer up Seb, I’ll buy you a beer.” Abbi says, stubbing out her cigarette with her boot.
He’s halfway through making dinner when there’s an abrupt knock on the door. He assumes it’s Robin, or maybe Demetrius.
He opens it hurriedly, wiping his hands on a dish rag. Already halfway through saying hi before he registered who it is.
The greeting dies in his throat. He stands there with his mouth open. He closes it.
Shane runs a hand through his hair, “I was walking by... I thought... We haven’t spoken since...”
Alex tells him to come in. Shane silently accepts, steps into the house, giving him a funny look. He realizes he’s wearing Shane’s sweater. He feels himself turn red and wants to make an excuse but he can’t think of anything.
“I’m just making dinner,” he says instead, “do you want to stay?” Alex had prepared for this in his head. He wanted to make him dinner, but he’d hoped it would a meticulously planned thing. Not a thrown together meal for a lone bachelor.
“No.” Shane says quickly and Alex feels disappointed. “I mean...” Shane starts, then stops.
He’s nervous. Alex realizes, and it’s strange, how he’s never really thought of Shane ever being nervous.
He’s not sure why either of them feel so awkward. Alex had betrayed his desires rather openly the last they’d seen each other. Shane had asked for them. He is suddenly afraid that Shane wants to take that back.
“I think your dinner is burning.” Shane says.
Alex jumps to acting, turning dials, stirring, not looking at Shane.
When he turns Shane is staring at him.
“You should keep it.” He says, looking away. Does he mean the sweater? He must.
“I meant to return it.” Alex says, feeling very embarrassed.
“It fits you better than me.” Shane mumbles, still not looking.
“Okay.” Is all he can think to respond. He is waiting for something, he doesn’t know what. The air is horribly tense. The silence between them extends, the longer it goes the more blank his mind is. The smell of burnt dinner is in his nose.
Shane runs his hands through his hair again, “I got Jas signed up for dance class at the community centre.”
“That’s good.”
“I think it’s good.”
“You said she needed something like that, the day when we ran into each other there.”
“You remember that?” Shane raises an eyebrow. Was it so long ago he should have forgotten? Or so mundane? It hadn’t felt mundane to him.
“That was the day my gran said you should take care of me. I was pretty embarrassed. It’s kinda seared in my mind now.” He forces himself to sound light, like it was a funny and inconsequential moment.
“That’s what made me...” He stops short.
“Made you what?”
Shane shrugs, makes a vague gesture between them “y’know.”
“So...” Alex says, gripping the counter his one hand, rubbing the back of his neck with the other, “this is like... still, or, I don’t mean still, it’s...” He gives up.
Shane’s terse look has faded, he looks vaguely suspicious. “You remember some random conversation we had months ago but not what I said to you yesterday?”
“I don’t know,” Alex says emphatic, earnest, “you’re hard to read. Or I’m afraid of misreading. It’s been a long time. Am I supposed to admit that?”
Shane laughs, “I don’t know.”
They both get quiet after that, but it’s not as tense as before. Alex wants to hear him laugh again, wants to tell him how much he likes it.
“This is dumb...” Shane starts, “but... do you want to go to Spirits Eve with me?”
Alex laughs this time, flooded with relief. “Yes. I do.”
“I know it’s not the most romantic thing in the world.”
“I don’t know. There’s lots of dark corners to get lost in.” Alex can’t suppress his grin, especially not when Shane’s cheeks turn slightly pink.
“I’ll meet you here.” Shane nods, looking at him in half wonderment.
Alex has to look away from that and nods at the floor, still smiling.
Whenever he thinks about that night he feels the embarrassment as intensely as if it had just happened. How quickly he’d fallen to his knees. How over eager he’d been to do what he’d been dreaming of for so long, how much he had loved it. How stupidly broken he had been when it revealed itself to be real, not dreamlike at all.
“So you sucked his dick only to find out he’d never do the same for you?” They’re tucked into a dark corner of the saloon, their first round downed and the second halfway to it.
“No. Well, yes.” There had been other steps, other fumblings, subtleties to be misinterpreted, but essentially, she was right.
“That’s rough.”
“Yeah, well…” He pushes his hair out of his face and then lets it flop back.
“I could have told you that’s how it would go.”
“Why didn’t you?”
She shrugs, half grinning, “because I was in the same position with you.”
His eyes widen, “what?”
She laughs, “oh, shut up. You had to have known. I followed you like a puppy. I would have easily sucked your dick and been left in a heap by you.”
He shakes his head, “no. I didn’t know.”
She pouts, “too blinded by love for Sammy then?”
He tries to scoff but he can’t make eye contact with her. He’d never imagined Abbi would be his confidante about all his stupidity with Sam. He breathes out a long exhale, noticing he does feel better, getting it out there.
“What about you then?”
“What about me?”
“What’s it been like, being away?”
“It’s been up and down.”
“And are you up or are you down now?”
She frowns, “it’s hard to say.”
He sighs, nodding slowly, “I know what you mean.”
They sit in silence. He feels like he has to return the kindness of letting him vent but he doesn’t know how to say it without it sounding forced.
He tries anyway, “if you want to talk about it…”
She smiles, but it’s more of a grimace, “I don’t.”
He nods.
“Not right now anyway. Do you have any more boy drama to distract me with?”
“Afraid not.”
They sit in silence again and it’s not uncomfortable.
After a minute of Abbi people watching she says, “the farmer is kind of hot, isn’t she?” Sebastian follows her eye line, seeing Ry talking with Emily at the bar, leaning against the counter casually.
“She’s cool. I think she’s kind of got a thing for Maru.” He says absently. He’d noticed her looks, the way she asks about her while being careful to sound like she’s not actually asking about her.
Abbi’s eyebrows shoot up, “really? And how does Maru like that?”
Seb shrugs, “I don’t think she’s noticed.”
“I guess Maru’s never really lived on earth, has she?”
Seb scrunches his face, “it’s not that… I don’t know. Since we’ve both been back, she’s… she’s different.”
“You sure it’s not that you’re actually taking the time to talk to her and not immediately writing her off as an annoying little sister?”
He scoffs, “no. She was annoying. And not on earth, like you said. But driven, always. Now she’s… absent, but not like she’s in space, more like she’s nowhere.”
“Do you think she’s depressed?”
He pauses. He had avoided putting a word to it until then and didn’t want to now. But the more he thought about it. “Yeah… I think she is.”
“And does that make you insecure, knowing you’ll have to compete to be the most angst-ridden kid in the family now?”
“Abbi!”
She cackles with laughter, “sorry, sorry, I couldn’t resist.” She calms down after a second, “in honesty that sounds pretty concerning. Have you said anything to her?”
“Nothing specific. But we’re getting along better.”
“Maybe you should tell her about the farmer’s crush.”
“Because love fixes everything, right?”
“Right.”
“I think I’ll let her figure that one out on her own time.”
Shane and Ry walk to the festival together. He feels twitchy with nerves. Why did he decide something so public for his and Alex’s first date? What if it went horribly wrong, and everybody saw? Even if it didn’t go horribly wrong, people would be watching, be curious, wonder why someone like Alex would waste their time with someone like him.
“You’re more taciturn than ever.” Ry states.
“No I’m not,” he grunts. He’s like this all the time, they both know it.
“Okay, well, I hope you at least attempt basic conversation with Alex.”
“How did you know?”
She grins, “a guess. Seems I was right.”
He sighs, “I don’t know if I can stand everyone knowing.”
She puts a hand on his shoulder, “you don’t have to tell them. It’s a dark and spooky festival, people will be distracted.”
He doesn’t believe her, but he tries to.
“Take your time, Shane. Go at your own pace.” She pats him on the back. Then more quietly she adds, “though looks like someone else might be a little eager.”
His head snaps up to where she’s looking, and there’s Alex walking towards them through the dark path. His pace is slowing to a pause, like he’s afraid maybe he shouldn’t be there.
“Hi Alex!” Ry greets brightly.
“Hi,” he says weakly, nervous. Shane can’t bare to look at either of them.
“I’m afraid I said I’d meet Leah promptly at the beginning of the festival, so I gotta rush. See you two around!” She calls, already rushed past both of them and disappearing into the approaching festival glow.
Shane and Alex stand across from each other. Why is he still so nervous? If anything, he’s even more nervous. Since Alex had kissed him like that... he can barely stand to sit still. He spikes between elated and terrified he’s going to fuck it up.
“Am I late?” He asks, knowing he isn’t.
“No...” Alex rubs the back of his neck, “I just thought I’d rather meet you here. Is that okay?”
Shane nods. He wants to ask why, but he can’t.
They fall in step beside each other and start walking towards the festival. Shane braces himself as they approach. Will it be easier or harder to be with Alex out there?
He feels the gentlest tug on his sleeve and responds immediately. They both stop and Alex looks up at him, gives him a small smile, and without saying anything kisses him once briefly on the lips.
Shane feels himself unwind.
It will be fine. It will be perfectly fine.
“You coming?” Sebastian asks. She’s sitting in the kitchen, eating the last slice of pie. Robin and Demetrius have already gone down to the festival, she said she’d follow soon after. She thinks she’d meant it.
“Why wouldn’t I?” She asks after a moment, forking another bite into her mouth.
He pauses a second. “You tell me.”
She chews slowly, contemplating him.
“Why are you being like this?” She asks with a mouth full of chewed up pie.
“Like what?”
She narrows her eyes at him.
“You’re the one being like something.”
“What’s something?”
He sighs heavily, rubbing his hands across his face. “Maru, you’re sitting in the dark eating pie by yourself.”
She swallows her last bite, “so?” She puts her fork delicately down on her plate.
“It’s not like you.”
“What am I like? What am I supposed to be doing?” She keeps her tone disinterested.
He shakes his head, “let’s walk down together.”
“Yes, brother.” She says, getting up in sardonic obedience and walking past him out of the room. He follows her silently, she can feel his eyes burning questions into her back.
The question he asks is one she never expected.
“Have you seen Penny?”
She freezes. He stumbles trying not to run into her.
“What?” She says softly, looking at him.
He brushes the hair out of his face, gives her a look that pleads don’t make me say it.
“Sam is fucked.” Maru grits out her teeth, “you know that, right?”
“Yeah.” He nods, “I know.”
“Then how the fuck have you been friends with him so long?”
He laughs in self deprecating way, doesn’t answer. They start walking again. Maru doesn’t know why he brought this up, or why he would do it now.
He asks, “is she okay?”
She doesn’t know how to answer that so instead asks, “do you know what he did?”
“More than I would like.” He admits, solemnly.
Neither of them say anything more after this, but it weighs on Maru’s mind the entire walk down. When they get to the festival it’s already in full spooky swing. The maze is standing as tall and daunting as ever. Vincent and Jas have attacked the Jack’o-’lantern making station, pumpkin guts spilling out on the ground. Lewis hovers about anxiously trying to get them to reel it in, worried about slipping hazards. Marlon cackles ominously whenever someone gets too close to one of the reanimated skeletons.
Abbi is standing by the saloon, observing the goings on with skeptical neutrality.
“Beat the maze already?” Seb asks her, as they approach.
She shakes her head no, “how many times can a person get stopped by the same spiders before they realize they should find a new challenge?”
“Your new challenge is standing by yourself in the shadows?”
She glares at him, “no, it’s talking to you.”
Maru snorts despite herself.
“Don’t work too hard, I’m going to say hi to Ry.” Seb says dismissively, but it’s clear he enjoys Abbi’s snark.
Maru wonders if she’s supposed to follow, if it’s weird that she stays with Abbi in the shadows. But going to Ry isn’t an option. She has her note in her pocket still. She doesn’t know how to breach that topic, only that she will have to at some point.
She shuffles awkwardly, wondering if she should go find something else to do. Abbi doesn’t react, just lights a cigarette and keeps her silence.
“So Sam left.” Maru says, because it’s still on her mind, because maybe Abbi can tell her something else.
Abbi rolls her eyes, “thank yoba.”
“I thought you were best friends?”
“We would have said that once.”
“I’m glad he’s gone.” Maru admit, partially to test Abbi’s reaction.
She eyes her curiously, “for your brother’s sake?”
“What?”
Abbi doesn’t miss Maru’s surprise. A quiet smile crosses her face, she nods slowly, looking over to where Sebastian is joking around with Ry.
“He’s changed a lot, hasn’t he?” She says after a moment.
Maru nods, still watching her brother. Ry sees her watching and flashes her a bright smile. This flusters her, she doesn’t know what to do. She looks at her shoes.
She should go over and say thank you. She should go over and say, what the hell are you doing, scolding me and then giving me my favourite pie? It’s too mixed up. She doesn’t know how to react.
She notices Abbi watching her strangely and she tries to brush it off.
“I’m gonna go get food.”
She’s not hungry though, and ends up staring at Gus’ masterpiece of a feast without desire. She takes a glass of pumpkin juice.
Penny gives her a tight smile from across the table. She doesn’t think it’s warm enough to warrant an approach, but it’s not nothing. Penny looks tired. She seems like she’s consciously clutching herself together, the emotional force pulling her thin body in on itself. Her face is pale. But she’s here, at the festival, and she’s eating. This isn’t nothing.
Maru guzzles her pumpkin juice, wondering what the hell to do now. Maybe she could get lost in the maze by herself for awhile. She lets her eyes scan over the scene. Seb has returned to Abbi’s side without Ry. Her parents are cozied up together, looking very much like they didn’t want to be disturbed. Marnie walks past Lewis like he’s a stranger and he follows her movements with a kicked puppy look on his face. She sees Ry disappear into the maze.
Or she thinks she does at first, but then she snaps her attention back to where she saw Ry disappear. It looked like she didn’t go through the entrance to the maze, but skirted around it, dove right into the hedge itself.
Why would she do that? Does she desperately need to make it to the community centre?
Casually she makes her way over to inspect. The hedge around the outskirts of the maze is thick and dense, but there is a small space someone could have shoved themselves through if really determined. Some of the twigs and branches on the hedge look snapped or bent from someone doing just that. She finds herself pushing into the hedge before she even considers how much she doesn’t want a confrontation with Ry.
At first it seems like she’s pushing around the outskirts of the hedge, like it will open up and she’ll be near the community centre, but instead of opening up the hedge consumes her. The only available path is in it. It’s dense, dark, she gets scratched, she keeps going.
She only realizes what she’s done when she hears voices.
“Look, can’t you help me with this? I help you all the time-” The sound of Ry’s voice stops her short, somehow it surprises her. Despite following her she hadn’t anticipated actually finding the farmer. She’d expected to be wrong and crawling around in a hedge for no reason. Until this moment, that had made more sense.
“Ry, we must cease this conversation immediately. Your friend has followed you and is about to emerge from the hedge. In fact she can hear us right now.” A deep voice Maru’s never heard before.
“My friend? What is your tone implying?” Ry’s whispering voice follows. There’s a pause, “I don’t see anyone.”
There is the sound of fabric swishing and mumbling. Maru strains her ears to hear better. Suddenly a force seems to lurch her from the navel forward and she finds herself tumbling through the hedge and falling to her knees.
“Eavesdropping is impolite, mortal.”
Maru has never seen the wizard before. She thought he was a rumour. She thought Lewis hired people from the city to setup this festival and told everyone it was a local magician to make it more appealing for tourists.
Maru is now looking up at him, his clipped purple beard oddly stiff in the breeze, eyes twinkling eerily like the stars in the sky behind him. He is immensely tall. Her mouth is agape. Ry is standing beside him, looking shorter than usual. Her muted earth-tone clothing a dull contrast against the wizard’s luminous purple. They make an odd pair, but it somehow doesn’t seem wrong.
For a moment Ry looks as shocked to see Maru as Maru is to see the wizard.
She blinks a few times, extracts her hands from her pockets and helps Maru up. One hand on her elbow, the other on her waist. Maru lets her do it.
“You’re a dramatic guy, Ras.” She says disapprovingly.
“I have no time for social niceties.”
“Don’t you have eternity?”
“Never mind. I must talk to Linus.” With a great swish of his cloak the wizard turns on his heel and marches into the darkness.
Ry rolls her eyes.
“The wizard is...”
“Kinda a dick, yeah.” Ry snorts.
“Real.” Maru finishes.
“Oh. You’ve never seen him?”
Maru shakes her head no.
“Huh. So many people say that. I guess he’s kinda reclusive.” Ry shrugs, and turns back to the hedge, guiding Maru with her.
“You sound like you know him well.” Maru says, trying not to pay attention to the fact that Ry hasn’t removed her hands from her.
“I guess.” Is all she says.
Maru hesitates, looks over her shoulder to where the wizard disappeared.
“What did you hear?” Ry asks, curious.
“N-nothing.” Maru mutters, her cheeks heating up. Being magicked out of a hedge had made her forget that she’d been following Ry. Sneaking. Spying.
Ry grins, “so do you usually like to stroll about through dense hedges?” It’s like she knows her exact train of thought.
“No...” Maru says, barely able to breathe. She doesn’t have an explanation, at least not a reasonable one. Ry’s going to think she’s even more out of wack than she already did.
But she doesn’t press. Only nods, still smiling like this is the funniest thing to happen to her all day. Maybe it is.
She lets Maru press into the hedge first, following close behind. To do so she lets go of her wrist, but the hand on her waist moves to her lower back, gently guiding her through the dark.
They continue on like this in silence. Maru can feel the hedge scraping her and snagging her clothes and hair. The darkness feels thicker with Ry behind her, like a pressure. The longer she waits for Ry to ask why she followed her the more intense it becomes.
She bursts under it, turning abruptly towards Ry.
“Thank you for your note. And the pie. You didn’t have to do that.” She says quickly, because otherwise she won’t at all, and this is better than saying she had no reason to follow her other than curiosity.
“Sure. No problem.” Ry says, and she’s looking past Maru, like she wishes she would turn around and keep walking.
“You were right though.” Maru admits.
Ry looks at her then. “I know.”
At first Maru feels a flare of anger. Why apologize for being harsh if she hadn’t meant it? But she hadn’t apologized for what she’s said, just how she’s said it.
She swallows, whispers “I don’t know how to fix it. I don’t even know how to want to.” It feels safe to say because it is dark and they are literally inside a hedge. Like it won’t follow them out.
Ry’s breath seems to catch.
Maru forces a half laugh. “I don’t know why I’m always running my mouth when I’m with you. You make me nervous.” Where the fuck did that come from?
“Why do I make you nervous?” She says it very softly, gently curious.
Maru can’t reply. Instead she looks at Ry’s lips. She knows this is an answer in itself.
Ry doesn’t move, doesn’t say anything, she waits.
The pressure seems to collect in swirls of air around them. Accumulating, becoming warm.
She hears the sound of footsteps on the other side of the hedge, someone screeching at some horror in the maze, the outside world.
Quickly, Maru turns around.
It feels like it should have happened, whatever had been about to, but her feelings are not facts. They walk the rest of the way through the hedge in silence. Maru feels the absence of Ry’s touch on her back the whole way, the whole night. It isn’t until much later that she begins questioning why Ry had crawled through an enchanted hedge to meet an actual wizard.